Mary Jane Goes To Hell
by Summersfan
Summary: AU The only logical end to the One More Day story-line. Shades of Fix-Fic, but a bit darker than that. Did anybody think the devil was really just trying to end a marriage? No, this deal was about so much more than that... this deal was for the WORLD.
1. Chapter 1

Mary-Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

It was just another stupid audition for a recurring role. Something she wanted. Something she needed. Something that could keep her in business a while.

That's why she was running. That was the only reason. It was a stupid reason. She was getting older, and she was going to lose the part to somebody younger. She was getting more interesting roles now, including some theater stuff that actually made her work and stretch the acting muscles she'd been leaving dormant while playing babe roles. Theater stuff with real characters.

But she wasn't getting the high-paying jobs anymore, and it hurt a little bit. She knew this world was shallow, that it wasn't all she was good for, but she had enjoyed the way it played to her ego.

And that was why she was running, trying to cross the road.

She doubted the cab driver had even seen her.

There was a moment of clarity before the pain, the crying, the feeling that she'd crapped herself, the feeling that everything was wrong and she was all twisted around.

Afterwards it all faded to numbness, and she found herself there on the sidewalk, staring vaguely at the red-headed body in front of her. That red hair, so fluffy, so unnaturally full-bodied. It cost her an hour of time every morning to make her hair like that.

But they loved it. Execs and TV people and theater people.

And it didn't seem to matter, suddenly. She touched that bouffant, flowing, luxuriant hair with a hand that couldn't truly feel any more, and she knew that she was dead. Completely dead.

Don't cross go. Don't collect the handsome husband and children she always assumed was lurking somewhere in the future.

Just…

Dead.

It made her laugh and sob all at once when Death arrived. A small fellow in dark clothing, smiling gently at her with a face that couldn't possibly smile, as it had no skin.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

She stood up. It was a New York sidewalk, which meant it was filthy and dirty and crowded. The EMTs were covering her body, moving on to try to help the driver of the car, who she suddenly didn't care what happened to.

She knew she ought to be mad. She knew it was all wrong.

Dammit.

"Are you ready?" he asked again, his voice ghostly.

She tried not to freak out. All her life she had tried to stay strong, tried to be ready for things you weren't supposed to be able to be ready for. Now she was dead, not even halfway through her life expectancy. Dead.

"Won't get any more ready with time," she said, resigned.

The figure nodded once, and then they were in hell.

2.

As hell went, this wasn't so bad. In fact, it was outright a parody of hell. Like something from bad TV. There were flames, but they were in the backdrop, with red walls behind them to emphasize it. Twisting shadows.

But she was on a solid, smooth, featureless red floor, and felt no heat from those flames.

The devil was standing there, smirking slightly. "Mary-Jane Watson," he drawled. Her name didn't sound right in his mouth. As if he had left the end trailing intentionally.

Bastard.

"Well, hello," he said, his voice very smooth. "Go ahead and get settled in; you'll have an eternity of suffering here."

Then he was gone, and she was alone, and she was frozen still in one place.

She was in hell!

Why? She hadn't been a bad person… were the fanatics right, did everybody go to hell if they didn't get religion? This was a bad time to figure that out. Very bad.

Although so far there was no torture. Maybe this was hell-lite, for those who had been okay but hadn't got religion. She was alone, though. Was that supposed to be some kind of punishment? What was going on?

Then a door opened, very far away, and a young man began stalking towards her, out of the shadows. He was dressed in tattered rags, a chainmail vest, and carried a sword. He was young, handsome, and had a grim look on his face.

"Mary-Jane?" he asked hesitantly.

"Do I know you?" she asked, completely off balance.

He shook his head. "We've never met, but I heard you were dead, and… well, there's less pleasant sorts than me watching, and you're sort of, um, famous, around here. Listen, I know you don't know me, but we need to get out of here, right now."

A denizen of hell was asking her to trust him. She didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

Hell-lite, anyway.

Of course, she'd seen all these movies. If she went blithely with him, he'd be a monster. He'd cut her head off with that weapon, or worse.

But if she ran away, he'd be the good guy, and she'd run right into the real monsters.

Catch-22.

"Say something heroic," she said.

He smiled wanly. "I'm not from around here."

That was close enough. Not from around here meant not from hell, meant he might be something better.

Or something from the real hell.

Dammit! Now was not the time to let her knowledge of the genre paralyze her. She knew what happened to the character too genre-savvy to do anything dumb. They died anyway, when they could have gotten out of it!

"I'll go with you," she said cautiously. "Do you have a weapon I can have?"

He chuckled, waving an arm back at the doorway he'd come through. "You couldn't use any of these weapons without a little training in Spirit-war, but I have some good weapons that might just be more your speed. Follow me, and we'll get back as quick as we can."

3.

He led her into a place that was more like a real hell than the world she'd just been in. Here the landscape had been blasted, destroyed. The ground itself was twisted, as if some kind of bomb had skewed everything to the left.

There was no sunshine, only ominous clouds overhead.

She shivered, hugging herself. "Where are we?" It was cold here, and damp. The clothes she had been wearing when she died were for a mild, sunny day in New York, and the cold soaked right through her.

"This used to be a part of Limbo, till they went to war." He was holding his sword at the ready as he led her across the landscape. He glanced back at her. "Say, would you like something more to wear? I'm afraid it only gets rougher from here."

"Please," she said, wondering what he could possibly give her.

He stopped and one-handedly undid a twisted cloth tied around his waist, tossing it to her. She shook it out, revealing it to be a smock with three holes for her head and arms. She pulled it on over her head.

It was grey, and ragged, but warm. He continued walking carefully over the twisted landscape, and she followed.

"So, how did you know my name?" she asked.

"Well, ever since I died I've been, uh, in a Better Place. And I always wanted to meet you."

"You, uh, you did?"

"Yes. You were very important to somebody important to me, even though I died long before that."

"Oh. So you were, uh, watching me. From, uh, heaven."

"Basically," he said. He glanced back at her. "Listen, I know this is all a bit hard to take in. Most of us have a lot of trouble adjusting to death. One of those big changing points in your, uh, existence."

She was trying, but this was all so very odd. "Why are we running?" she asked bluntly. "Who are you afraid of?"

He fidgeted. "There are some very bad people that were also following your story. People who were…. Who were enemies. Who in life would have killed you if they'd known… but they didn't, they couldn't."

She didn't like where this was going. "I don't have any enemies—I mean, there are people who don't like me, but who…?"

The air in front of them shimmered, and her guide jumped back. "Down!" he snarled. "They're `porting in!"

The men who appeared couldn't have been more different. One was skinny and bald, wrinkled and diseased. He was scowling.

The other was huge, a lion of a man with black hair and a beard.

"Kraven!" spat the guide, holding the sword up.

"Easy, old man," said the little bald man, holding his hands up. "We're here as friends."

"Kraven?" demanded the old man. "He's a villain through and through."

"Perhaps," said the big man. "But a man of honor, to the end. You're no denizen of hell, Parker. You've already run her right by the dens of the hellbeasts, where they can get her scent. They'll be on you soon if you don't accept our help."

"Come on," said the little bald man. "We owe it to him. We owe him so much… you know how much we owe him. Let us try to pay back just a little bit…"

Her guide, Parker, hesitated. "All right," he said finally. "Just till we get out of this place."

"Then let's GO!" snarled the big man, looking around and sniffing. "They're already on their way!"

The thing that bounded up over the landscape looked like it belonged in a monster movie. Only it was moving too fast, too determinedly, and it had too many teeth. It snarled and closed quickly, heading right at them, and MJ didn't want to scream. She didn't want to be the damsel in distress.

But she had no weapon, and she'd never seen it before, and when it ran into her she lost track of the ground and the whole world spun away and she couldn't HELP screaming like a stupid side-kick girl who just exists so the men in her life can save her.

Ugh. Living the cliché.

When she found her feet again Parker had stabbed the thing, and Kraven was eating its heart. She tried to hold down the sudden nausea.

The bald man was beside her, grinning. Only his grin split his whole skull, showing pointy needle-like teeth and a long, slavering tongue. She flinched back from him.

"I've only been dead and damned for a short time," he assured her. "Kraven has been dead a long time, and is already feared throughout hell. He wouldn't have come to help, but I talked him into it. I can be persuasive, these days. Come, let's go, fast as we can. Where there's one hound, there'll be more."

She shuddered, but followed him. Parker was right on her heels, and they left the big beast behind, with Kraven tearing into it.

"He's becoming as bad as any demon," said Parker, disgusted.

"You heaven-bound souls don't get it," snapped the bald man. "That's how you survive down here, how you avoid becoming a victim. Even middle-of-the-road people like me—I can't ever let on that I died doing good, or else these people will tear me up. Here? I have to let the darkness out. All of it. Even the parts I fought so hard! Bah."

His ramblings were scaring her. "Thank you for helping me," she said quietly, hoping that the subtle subject change would balance him.

He glanced over his shoulder, grinning at her. "It's not for you, or for any reason you'd understand. It's just that, there was a moment, right before I died… just a moment… when that idiot Spider did me a favor. And I have to repay it."

That was nonsensical. She couldn't understand it at all.

Kraven came loping after them. "We have trouble," he said shortly. "The bad one is loose, and he's… even I can't handle this one."

"Run!" snarled the bald man. "Run fast, run hard!"

She saw it as a reddish blur on the horizon. Kraven grabbed her, tossing her to the bald man. "Teleport now!" he yelped as the red creature jumped on him.

It looked like the hero Spider-man, but some nightmarish form of him. His skin seemed to melt and flow into weapons, and he tore the big man to bits in a second, howling with laughter.

Then the world around them shimmered and was gone.

4.

Now they were in some nightmare city, and Parker swore quietly, jumping away from the bald man. "Now we're further than ever from anywhere I can get her to safety!" he snapped.

"Well, my range is limited," gasped the bald man, falling to his knees. "Damn, Parker! Damn! That was Cletus… Carnage! We can't… I can't… did you see what he did to Kraven? Kraven was the strongest one I could find who didn't want her dead! You don't have a lot of allies in hell, Parker…."

"I know," said her guide coldly, raising the sword. "And I asked you before; why are you helping?"

The bald man's head wavered slightly, and half of it seemed to melt away, an illusion vanishing. "Because I owed him!" snarled the demon. "I owed him, and you know it! Because even when I hated him, when I was building death-traps for him, he still tried to help me… because it's part of my stupid job, restoring balance! Because I work for higher powers now! I'm done helping, though, if Kasady is involved. I won't face him."

Parker sighed. "Then teleport out of here, and make several stops in hell on your way. He'll try following your teleport trail, and that should lead him away from us, if we're lucky. And… thank you, Beck."

The bald man with half a head snarled, then left.

MJ shivered, but this time not from cold. Now they were in some kind of ruined city, and she wasn't sure what would happen now. "What were they talking about, Parker?"

"In general? Bad things. Follow me."

He set out at a run, and she followed him.

This was ridiculous. She needed weapons, and a better idea who these madmen were. They were obviously in some kind of war, and they kept referring to somebody else. "Who were they talking about?" she yelled. No reply. "Parker!" she shouted, getting even more frustrated.

He slowed down, giving her a slightly amused look. "You can call me Ben, kid," he replied. "There'll be time for answers later, but right now we have to get you OUT of hell."


	2. Chapter 2

Mary-Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

They'd been running for what felt like days, through this hellish landscape, ruined buildings, deserted cities, and assorted detritus.

This wasn't like the real world, though. She was tired, but it was a different sort of tired. It was as if she was expending little bits of herself, as if she was making herself…. Less real. As if the longer they ran the more transparent she began.

Finally Ben stopped, taking a deep (but apparently unnecessary) breath. "You need to rest," he said. "We can hide out here for a while. Come on."

She wasn't hungry. In fact, she wasn't sure she could eat. This was all fantastic and wild and insane.

Sitting in an abandoned basement, glowering at him, she decided that if she couldn't get a weapon from him, she'd at least get information. "What is this all about?" she asked, as levelly as she could manage.

Actress, sure. Ditz? Never in a million years.

He sighed. "I… I've thought about how to try to explain this, really, I have. But it's hard. The basics… the basics are this. Your life is a lie."

She glared at him. "My life?"

"Parts of it," he clarified. "The devil… the devil erased some important things from your life, and now… now… well, again, it's complicated. The people here in hell, a lot of them, especially nuts like Carnage, well, they hate you. They hate you with a passion, and if they can hurt you, they will."

"I'm already dead," she pointed out.

He shuddered. "Oh, Mary-Jane. There are things so much worse than death."

He said it sincerely. If it were in a play or a movie or even some stupid soap opera, she would have laughed out loud at the affectation. But he said it so chillingly seriously, with real fear... It scared her.

For a second she thought about ways she could use that, could make her own line readings so much more real. Then she remembered that, being dead, acting was sort of in her past.

"So tell me why they want to hurt me," she said. "I never…"

"It's not you!" he said, looking a little upset. "It's… well… it's Peter. Look, let me… let me tell you where I live. I live in this place full of rooms, okay. Empty rooms. One or two have people in them. People he failed to save. But mostly, it's a place that should have been full of people, but they're still _alive_. He saves them. Do you understand?"

"No, not really."

"He… You know Spider-man?"

She felt a quick rush of adrenaline, as always. "I do."

"I was the first person he failed to save," said Ben. "The very first."

"And you're his biggest fan anyway?" she asked sarcastically, putting things together in her head.

"That's… that's not important."

"You're Ben _Parker_?" she asked, putting even more pieces together in her head.

"What…?"

"Peter Parker, he's Spider-man," she said, reveling in the look of surprise on his face.

The biggest joke of all was that she knew Spider-man's secret identity. Hell, she'd nearly _dated_ him once.

She had been his neighbor, in Queens. Sort of. Her aunt, actually, had been, and she'd stayed with her aunt on and off while trying to break into show biz. And while there she'd seen Spider-man coming and going from next door, where the geek lived. The one her aunt was always trying to set her up with.

A nice enough guy, really. They'd come closer when his girlfriend died, and he'd been about to go off the loose end. They nearly dated, but she knew his secret, and wasn't about to start any kind of relationship with a guy who was lying to her about something that important.

She took off. She'd always wondered if she should just confront him, let him know that she knew. See what would happen.

But she'd never done it.

Ben coughed. "Okay, yes. Yes. He's my nephew."

She nodded. "Okay, I've got that. And these people, attacking us, they're his enemies. I get that. Why are they attacking _me_?"

He sighed. "You were married to him, Mary-Jane. Married to Peter."

She laughed at him for a little while. "I think I would have noticed."

"No. Mephisto—the devil—changed the world. Peter made a deal with the devil, and made it so you were never married to him."

"What… like time travel?"

"Exactly."

Now she was angry. "That's not possible." Offering her an alternate past—a way that she could have been somebody else. Offering her … what? Pretending to be family?

Maybe this guy was better at torture than she thought.

"It is!" he insisted. "It didn't effect us here. We got to see it all. I don't know what the devil is doing—why he would do that—I don't know what it gains him. But when I saw you die… I knew it was part of it."

"I don't… I don't understand."

He smiled grimly. "Neither do I. But Mephisto is pure evil… and Peter… he's always been a force for good in the world. Saving lives, giving people hope…"

She knew about lives, and hope. Spider-man was a bully who ran around punching people in the head. That wasn't about hope. It was about brutality. Violence. Mayhem.

She knew he meant well. She'd known him at least that well. But he was essentially a terrorist, a vigilante who believed that his fists could solve any problem. And if he was dumb enough to make a deal with the devil, too? Maybe they were all better off without him.

So she was quiet, and rested, waiting for this guide of hers to take her somewhere safer.

And she hoped he was smarter than his nephew.

2.

Before they left Ben began sorting through his pockets, finding some chalk and a candle. He drew up a quick shape on the floor, lit the candle, and waited.

Something crawled out of the floor. Something that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before, nothing real. It was something from the darkest nightmares, an unformed thing that pulsed with darkness and malevolence.

She stayed as far away as possible while he did this. She wasn't sure what the rules were in this place, but knew that in every bad horror movie, heck, even the good ones, a person doing this kind of thing was a bad guy, or In Over Their Head.

Familiarity with the genre wasn't helping her at all.

Ben said a few quick phrases in some guttural language. "Show me where the dead are—show me where my enemies are!" he hissed in English.

The thing pulsed a few times, then faded away. Ben sank down to his knees, holding his head.

"Ooo, that doesn't get any easier," he said shakily. "Well, we've lost Carnage for now… I've got to get you up to someplace where I know some people. There are movers and shakers down here—people who are bad. Not just insanities like Carnage. Real threats."

She found the idea of anything more threatening than Carnage ludicrous. Just the memory of that red face, split in a too-large grin showing row after row of needle-like teeth… it made her shudder. "Movers and shakers?"

He stood up. "Hell isn't really where I've… I haven't really… I'm not prepared at all for this!" He sounded as if he expected better of himself, which was ludicrous. Unless he regularly went to hell to save people, then of course he wouldn't be prepared.

She carefully wrapped the blanket he'd given her a little tighter around her shoulders. "What are you planning to do?" she asked cautiously.

He shrugged. "There are people who… who wrestle fate. People who try to change destiny. I'm not one of those people. I wasn't in life. I only had… I had a dinky little job, and I did what I could. I provided for my family, kept them safe. Peter… he was such a brilliant kid. I thought he'd grow up to invent something that would change the world. And I was worried. You watch the TV, you see people like Tony Stark building big new weapons. I could see the world changing, getting more dangerous. I told him, with great power comes great responsibility. I just wanted him to not build some big new superbomb or virus or whatever. I wanted him to go make the world a better place… solve world hunger, find the cure to cancer."

She snorted. "Brilliant?"

"I know, I know, it looks silly. And he's a photographer, and… and… well, I wasn't thinking big enough. He's saved the world, you know. Taken on people so much bigger than himself, taken on people he had no chance of beating. I'm not that person. Coming out and trying to save you… this is way over my head. I'm sorry."

He was flustered, too, and she actually had to smile. "So there are heroes in hell?"

"No, just villains," he replied. "Kraven was a bad, bad man, and he nearly killed Peter on occasion. Killed himself, when he finally proved to himself that he could kill Peter. But he's… he's honorable, at least. Not a real monster. No, to find heroes, we have to get out of hell."

"And we can just walk out?" she asked, amused.

He shrugged. "I can. Being from up higher, I know I can. You… well, you're kind of a weird case, aren't you? At the very least, in some of the close places, I can find people who'll protect you."

"People like Kraven who are evil, but decent?" she asked, scowling at him.

He shook his head. "People… people who walk a fine line between good and evil. People… shades of gray, perhaps. At any rate, people that Carnage can't fight. Even… even guardians. The people who keep those who belong here from leaving."

He started walking, and she followed him. He seemed to be wandering in circles, and it felt as if they walked for days. She never felt tired, or hungry. She never needed a bathroom. Whatever this place was, it wasn't life as she remembered it.

Finally they came to a staircase, and started climbing it. Ben was keeping a careful eye on the horizon, whistling through his teeth quietly. "See that?" he asked, pointing at something circling in the sky far away.

She squinted. "A bird?"

"Demon," he replied. "A fairly minor one. Probably one of… hm. One of Mephisto's watchers? Or somebody else? I don't know. I know the hell-lords are still in chaos after that nasty business in limbo… I was hoping they wouldn't notice what I was doing, here, but Mephisto is a crafty one. Come on, we need to be gone."

3.

They climbed and climbed. Before it had felt like days; this felt like years. It seemed they would never stop climbing.

And then they were there.

Mary-Jane was starting to realize something about the nature of time here. About the way physics worked. "This is all spirit, isn't it?" she asked, gesturing.

Ben nodded. "You're smarter than most who come through here. A lot of folks take a very long time to figure that sort of thing out. Anyway… whoa! Stop, stop! Don't move!"

She froze. "What is it?"

The demon that moved around from behind her was like nothing she'd ever seen before. It was huge, and black, with huge spikes for hair. It smirked at her. "Darling girl," it said.

Ben Parker drew his sword. It shone with an unearthly light that didn't belong in this nightmare realm where she'd seen no sunshine. It shone with a light that made her uneasy. A light of purity that threatened to burn her.

"Blackheart," he growled. "What do you want?"

Blackheart shrugged. "You're interfering with my father Mephistopheles' plans, you know," he said.

"You've stood against him before."

"I've stood against him to usurp his authority," corrected the big demon. "I have no such opportunity in letting you take this woman out of here."

Ben moved closer. The sword seemed to hum as it drew nearer the demon.

"Do you think you can stand against a lord of hell?" asked Blackheart, amused.

"I'm told this sword was once held in Uriel's hand—your uncle!" snarled Ben. "You tell me."

Blackheart made a harrumphing noise, turning to consider Mary-Jane. "You, dearie, you think you can escape my father's clutches? That will not happen. He is lord and master here, and you are nothing."

She knew this was about intimidation, that she couldn't be cowed by this. She knew he was trying to scare her. The thing to do was to be flippant. To be like Spider-man, to laugh at him.

She couldn't. She could barely breathe, staring up at this huge form. It grinned at her, revealing rows of sharp teeth, then vanished abruptly. Air rushed in to fill the space where he'd been standing with a gentle snapping noise, and she could feel wind brushing her hair.

"What was…?" she asked, biting her lip.

"Just a warning," said Ben, sheathing the sword. "He won't tell Mephisto. They hate each other too much. But he's right; if Mephisto doesn't know, he will soon."

"Mephisto… that's the devil, right?"

"Yes," he replied, turning and running.

4.

Soon they were in a forest, wandering through dead trees. This place was different. It wasn't alive, but the sky above was purple, not black. It was as if it was closer to something alive, although they weren't quite there yet.

She was growing tired again, but didn't dare stop them now. Carnage had been scary; Blackheart was a nightmare. She wasn't sure how she could possibly explain the difference between the two to anybody. Physically, they weren't so very different.

But there was something about Blackheart's presence…. Beyond what she could see. Something she could sense on some other level that let her know that he wasn't just going to use physical force, wouldn't attack her, wouldn't hit her.

He could do so much worse than that.

Finally Ben stopped, sitting down and leaning against a dead tree. He was breathing hard, but she knew that was just illusion. She'd been holding her breath for hours now.

This place was not what it seemed.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Still inside hell," he muttered. "But a different level. I don't think most demons and most murderers like Cletus—Carnage—can get up here. I don't know why Mephisto was able to drag you to hell when you died, but like I thought, he can't bind you to the lower realms. You don't belong trapped here with the worst of the worst."

She shuddered. "Can you really…? Would you really face Blackheart with just that sword?"

He sighed. "Peter… after his parents died, I raised him like he was my own. No father could have loved Peter more than I did. No father could have been prouder. But he taught me something. Sitting up here, watching him… he did so much more for this world than I've ever done. It's… it's a risk. This sword is powerful. I got it from a very powerful person. But I've come down here… made myself vulnerable. But… I… I think I would."

He said it with doubt in his voice. He'd never done anything like this, she realized. Never fought any kind of battle or war like this. Never had the power to take any kind of responsibility.

He was no super-hero like his nephew.

Oddly, that comforted her.

She sat down beside him. "So, why'd the devil… why did Peter… How? Why?"

He chuckled. "Well, it was May." There was pain in his voice. "She was dying, and Peter… he was crushed. Devastated. Doing everything he could to bring her back. But she was already brain-dead, and he was just putting off the inevitable funeral. The devil came to Peter, then, when he was weak, and offered him a life… for your marriage."

She thought about it for a few minutes. "Why?" she asked finally. "I mean, this is the devil. Why not Peter's soul?"

Ben laughed weakly. "I didn't know either. I had to go to an Oracle, somebody who could tell what was going on. That's where I got the sword, too. The Oracle told me… well, first off, I should tell you the part that's… Peter never would have done it if he didn't have a suspicion, deep inside, that you would be better off without him. He saw you suffering a lot over the years, and even though you stuck by him through thick and thin… he wondered. He wondered if maybe you would have been better off without him."

"Shades of my least favorite Christmas movie, huh?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "But what did the devil get out of this? Why was our marriage so… so terrible to him? Did he just want us to suffer? What? Did he get my soul and Peter's soul? I don't understand!"

Her guide smiled again. This time she noticed how gentle it was, and was surprised. "I'm afraid it's not simple a tall. If it was, this would be easy," he replied quietly. "Mephistopheles—the devil—he wasn't content with simply taking Spider-man's soul, with claiming one hero. What's one hero? They ride on the edge of the tide anyway."

"The edge of…? Oh. Walking a tightrope?"

"I can't keep up with the idioms," replied her guide, his eyes twinkling. "I am dead, you know. Yes. Any hero could fall, could lose control. Spider-man's come close, over the years. Very close. There's a darkness in him, in what he does. Taking the law into his own hands. So it would be a hollow victory for the devil to take what might fall into his hand anyway. But the devil…"

Ben shook his head, leaning against the tree and closing his eyes. "I can show you. Hang on."

His chest shifted, becoming a television set. She stared at him, dumbfounded for a minute. "Did you just…?"

"It's just a trick. An illusion. You'll learn one or two," he replied, smiling sheepishly. "See that? It's Peter. Present, and future. It all mixes together. It's a trick the Oracle taught me. See how it goes? Right now he's sort of happy. Single, on the prowl… doesn't remember you at all."

It was a little depressing to imagine herself married to this nebbish little bookworm. Worse, to imagine being happy about it. "What's your point?"

"Watch," he whispered. "She starts to get sick. May. It's inevitable. She's old. And he'll know, deep inside, that he sacrificed greatly to give her life, even if not how much he sacrificed. And his heart will be filled with despair."

They watched him don the black costume again, and she felt her heart speed up. In the black costume he looked dangerous, like a villain.

"Then a bad man will get worse… a man he knows is a great threat, who other people trust…"

When she saw him kill the villain in his silly costume, MJ closed her eyes, biting her lip. "He becomes the killer?"

"Worse," said her guide, and his voice cracked. "He kills, and the other heroes condemn it. They come to arrest him, and…. He was always smarter than this. Smarter than just some thug uses his fists to dispense justice. Once, when he was young, and new at this, he met a man who had turned himself into a lizard. Peter was able to use that formula to turn him back. Think of what that took! In recent years he's learned more about his powers, about what makes him so strong. So powerful. About mystical sources and scientific sources. And with his acumen… he'll need more power, when they come. When the Thing comes to arrest him, he has to be even stronger. He needs more raw power."

"And he can get it?" asked MJ, her throat suddenly dry. She watched an even stronger being kick and punch down hero after hero, still wearing that stupid black suit. Looking stronger, looking unstoppable.

"He always had the means to get more power," replied Ben. He sounded like they were talking about a funeral, and in a lot of ways, they were. "But he never tried, before, because he knew there was a terrible cost. He always held back the strength he had, so careful never to kill, never to maim. Because he knew that with power, comes responsibility. And even the blackest villains never had to fear for their life from Peter. And then, even worse, when May dies… his closest friend, the only anchor he has left, the only thing keeping him from forgetting and giving in to despair…"

MJ stared at the man with the funny, rippling haircut. "Harry?" she said, confused. "I know Harry. I dated him once, I think."

"He was dead!" snarled Ben. "He was dead, before, but Mephisto brought him back, as part of setting the clock right. You think that's just coincidence? It's part of the plan."

"The plan?"

"I don't know what the plan is. But I know…" The TV in his chest faded away, and then it was just his chest again. "I know Peter is going to become something very dark. Something… almost villainous. It's happening right now."

She thought about it. "And you think that has something to do with me?"

"Look, when Peter goes over that edge, when he gets a little villainous… I can't see it, yet. The further I look into the future, the murkier it gets. Too many possibilities. But I see them coming for him."

"Who?"

"Gods and men. Avengers. SHIELD. Everybody. I see him do stupid things… things to get more power. Things to make him stronger. I see him reach for the symbiote… Venom."

She didn't like the sound of that, but wasn't sure what it meant. "So what does the devil gain from all this?"

"The world," said Ben bleakly. Suddenly he sounded old beyond his years. "You see, Mephisto knew that taking Peter's soul would never be enough. One soul, one person, and perhaps chipping away. Letting those he would have saved die. But this way… all those heroes who come up against him, they lose. And some of them are going to die. The devil knows… he knows that without you, things are different! Before, when Peter faltered, you were there. You picked him up. Anchored him to this world. Made him a hero in so many ways. Of all the women in his life, you were the strongest. When he went out to be a hero, you supported it. You were… you were his partner, in a way that nobody else, not even somebody with powers, could be. You made him Spider-man, as much as his powers do."

She laughed at him. "You're putting an awful lot on me."

"With you, he was strong enough to grow old," replied Ben. "Strong enough to survive everything and still be a hero in his old age. Without you? He's dying inside. Peter… Peter has always been more tortured than the villains he fights. The worst of them, the ones with the best reason to turn and destroy the world? Have half the provocation he has. And he has always had more raw power naturally than some of them have spent all their lives accumulating. Peter is a textbook villain waiting to happen. And one day… with you gone… he will happen."

Mary-Jane's heart was racing, and she knew she ought to defend Peter. Say how this could never happen, how it was too sudden. How he was a _hero_, not some stupid villain, how he would never kill.

But looking into Ben's eyes, she could see a reflection of Peter. A distant, dim reflection. She could see everything that her guide had said, right there in his eyes. And she didn't know how she could read him so well. After all, if he'd made that deal with the devil it had never happened that way, had it? She'd never learned what was in Peter's eyes, never tried to understand all that drove him.

But she could see it, anyway. Could see that Peter's demons had won.

"He kills quite a few heroes," said her guide sadly. "And in the end, it changes the world. Spider-man as a hero was… well, nobody respects him. People laugh. It's funny. The big ones, they think they're changing the world, and he's just a bit player. But you see, he's one pawn that has the ability to become so much bigger and worse… if he's on the other side of the chessboard."

"They make Peter a villain," said Mary-Jane. Her voice sounded a bit scary, to her.

"Yes."

The wrongness of it enveloped her. Spider-man might be just the funny man in colored pajamas who jumps around and punched the bad people, but he was solidly, certainly, on the side of the angels. He was always the hero.

"How much more power will he get?" she asked quietly.

"With just the power he has right now, he could kill a god," replied Ben seriously. "He's on a level where he could easily go face to face with Thor. Let him get more power? I don't know. I don't know who could stop him."

"What can I do?" she whispered. "I'm dead!"

"I know. But Mephisto… he dragged you to hell when you died. And you don't belong there. Certainly not where he brought you. I think something about you scares him… even dead, he tried to sideline you, get you out of the way. I think… I don't know what else to do. If Mephisto is afraid, then I need to get you… to get you out of hell."

Then she heard a roaring noise, and Ben jumped to his feet, keeping his sword out. "Oh, dear," he said softly. "That is not a good noise at all."

The monster that came up through the trees towards them looked nearly seven feet tall. He was blonde, he was an animal, he was grinning madly. He had mutton-chop sideburns, cut short, in contrast to the long blonde hair falling down his back. He wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Sabretooth," breathed Ben. "Oh, God, no!"

Sabretooth chuckled. "I ain't been dead very long, but they tell me you're not supposed to be here. Naughty, naughty."

*

A/N: Yes, Sabretooth is dead in current X-Men canon. Spoiler! And all that.


	3. Chapter 3

Mary-Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

Mary-Jane knew Ben had said that the more demonic beasts and the more wicked people shouldn't have been able to get this far, and she doubted any nobility in Sabretooth's character accounted for his presence.

Which meant that something else, something terrible, had brought him here. One of the lords of hell, probably the devil himself.

She still didn't understand all the rules, but she understood well enough what Ben had explained about the devil. She understood deals with the devil. The devil had brought her here for a reason, and she wasn't leaving hell with that reason unfulfilled. The devil would twist the rules here.

Would send a dead man after her.

Why a dead man and not a demon? She wasn't sure.

Sabretooth grabbed Ben, stopping him from drawing the sword, and slammed him into a tree. "Don't think pretty weapons are gonna stop me," he snapped. "That thing's for use on demons, which I ain't. Yet. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've been dead before. Didn't really slow me down at all, did it?"

Mary-Jane spun, grabbing a branch off a dead tree and hurling it at Sabretooth. "Hey!" she yelled. "Let him go!"

The big killer turned his head, smirking at her. "Don't worry, frail. You'll get your turn. I remember your man all too well. Humiliated me. Beat me. Do you know who beats me? Nobody."

Ben seemed to grow smaller, and then there was an explosion, and Sabretooth was blown back, away from him, and he fell to the ground, coughing.

Mary-Jane ran to him, grabbing his shoulder. "What was that?" she demanded.

"Another little trick," he whispered. "Creed…"

Sabretooth stalked towards them again, undeterred. "Thing is, ain't a demon can touch you, know that?" growled the big man. "You got friends, and she don't belong here. None of the big guys can do a damn thing. You should see them howl, helpless, frustrated… Love your style."

Ben drew the sword, crawling to his feet and holding it unsteadily, aiming it at the monster. "Stay back, Creed," he warned the big man.

Creed shrugged. "Up here I don't have no fancy healin` powers. Down here, should I say? Anyways, here, I'm just a soul in need of tormentin`. And they got the worst one of all for me. Can't feel a thing. Can't enjoy any kills. Can't hurt people. Can't torture or torment. And the big guy, he's got the greatest leash ever built for me. He can tell me… when I can. Who I can. So I'm better'n a pet demon, get it? He unleashes me on who he likes."

"Why are you telling us this?" asked Ben guardedly.

Creed grinned. "Benjy, boy, you been dead too long. I'm telling you this because I ain't no fancy toy anybody can put a leash on. I ain't nobody's weapon."

He grabbed the sword out of Ben's hand with unnatural speed, then casually gutted the other man with the weapon. Ben gasped, falling to his knees, and Creed carefully but still just as casually handed the sword to MJ. "Yer free to go, frail," he said, jerking his head in the direction they'd been headed. "Go mess up the boss-man's plans."

"But… but… you're…" She stared in horror at Ben. His wounds didn't seep blood, but light, and she knew that Creed could do damage to him here, terrible damage.

Creed's grin showed too-sharp teeth. "Think I'm doing you a favor, frail? I'm doing this to piss off my new boss. If'n he breaks and gives me the things I want, I'm still coming back for you. So you run… run good and hard."

His grin widened. "I like it when they run."

She knew she didn't have the muscle to swing the sword fast enough to cut him, but she'd begun puzzling the rules of this place out. It wasn't about physical strength; there was no physical here. It was about spirit.

And she knew she was stronger on the inside.

The blade took his head off his shoulders, and she let out a scream of anger as he fell.

Letting her have the sword had been a mistake. Letting her know that this wasn't an act of kindness and goodness, but just a bargaining ploy with his masters? Letting her know she'd have to face him again, eventually?

Stupidity.

She kicked his head away from his body, remembering what he had said about healing. Besides, here, she was pretty sure she couldn't kill him. That would sort of undo the whole 'eternal torment' angle.

Ben stared at her, his mouth wide open. "What are you…? What…?" he gasped. She grabbed him by the shoulder.

"We need to be gone, right now!" she snapped. "Can you walk?"

2.

They went on this way, the sword out and naked in her hand, running and jogging through the woods. Ben stumbled along behind, while she led the way.

She was beginning to figure a few things about this place out.

First of all, the devil wasn't just trying to get her soul. This was part of a larger game. She wasn't sure how this all fit together with the husband she'd never had, with the world at large, with Peter frickin` Parker, but she understood that she was a pawn in the devil's hand. That he didn't care about her personally, just the puzzle she was part of.

Secondly, she could run forever here. It was taking energy to run, parts of herself, but unless attacked, it seemed she could draw almost endlessly on that energy.

Thirdly, and most importantly, things weren't what they appeared to be. Something could easily disguise itself as something else.

"So, Ben Parker," she said. "Tell me why you're here."

He was stumbling less and less as they went, recovering quickly. "I just… I just… It seemed like a good idea at the time!" he sputtered.

She laughed. "Just like that, coming to hell to rescue me?"

"It's been done before," he said. "I mean, not regularly, but it's part of the, the rules. We all know that. If there's somebody down here that's not one of the big bads, if they can pass the guardians, then a person willing to sacrifice their own eternity to save them… that person can take them out of here. There's even a Greek myth about it… I heard that the Avenger Hawkeye did it, once. It's the rules."

She was skeptical of his reliability at this point. He'd turned out to be amazingly ineffective as a guide or guardian, and hadn't realized yet what she already had.

Sabretooth, Victor Creed, was one of the very worst of the killers. A serial killer, completely unrepentant. Ben had claimed somebody like Carnage couldn't get this far up, couldn't pass through the different levels of hell.

But if the devil wanted to use him as a tracking dog, then he could send even the very worst killer up here.

Which meant all the worst souls in all of hell could be used against them. All of Peter Parker's enemies. All the various monsters and what-not.

They still weren't safe, and Ben Parker hadn't figured that out yet.

All the rules he thought he knew weren't _real_. They were fluid, changing as the devil liked. They weren't on level playing ground, and he hadn't realized it yet.

She made a mental note to listen more carefully to everything he told her. Because he wouldn't notice the little flaws and inconsistencies.

She'd have to try to protect him from his own stupidity.

3.

They took a break when they'd climbed another level, and were in another place. This was a nice place, with green grass, and old, half-destroyed walls. There was still no sun, and a stink of decay all around, but they were getting further from the source of the rot.

Ben was still gasping for breath he didn't need, clutching his chest. She kept the sword in hand. She was aware that Creed had waited for them to stop to attack, and she wasn't sure how he'd covered so much ground so fast. There was a possibility that others could teleport, not having to cover the ground between point A and point B.

So she stayed ready for anything.

He groaned. "This isn't how I imagined this."

No, he clearly had no idea what kind of work went into being a hero.

Of course, neither did MJ. But somehow, bone-deep, she had the feeling that she could remember what it was like. As if she'd seen it out of the corner of her eye, she knew that heroes came home every night with new bruises, with broken ribs. Heroes cried when they couldn't save the little kids.

Real heroes would rather die than watch a little kid die.

But how did she know any of that?

She was beginning to suspect that his whole crazy story was true. Too much of it felt like a life she had lived, one that she had forgotten. Something that had slipped under the surface.

Something that had been stolen from her.

That made her mad.

"Tell me more about what you do know," she said quietly.

He shrugged. "I told you everything."

"Tell me… tell me what's happening to Peter right now."

He grimaced. "You can't really see out very well from here. When I left, he was in some big fight with Norman Osborn again. And Norman's new, uh, flame. It's all… all part of the same old circus. He runs around dealing with low-level problems, and all the while his enemies go ever-higher. Get ever-smarter. Look at Norman Osborn! Look at him!" There was disgust in Ben's voice.

No, decent men made terrible heroes, she decided. They didn't have the depths in their heart to show them what a true villain would do. They couldn't imagine the darkness a thing like that carried within.

It made a horrible sense, though. Coupled with all they'd talked about, with Spider-man's impending villainy. He probably could imagine everything that a villain could do. He probably could anticipate.

And then he could become.

"We need to stay moving," she said.

It was too late, of course. Creed had followed them. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, watching. Too far away to attack. Not even bothering to hide himself.

Just watching.

He followed them as they walked, always keeping a distance. She was pretty sure Ben never saw him. Her savior was rapidly losing his shiny halo in her eyes.

Still, he had come to hell to battle all the odds and try to recover her. She had to give him credit for that, at least.

She led the way from that point, and he didn't ask for the sword back. She suspected that he had been shaken up by the first attack.

Of course, she didn't offer, either.

When they reached the stairs leading to the next level she made him go first, so she could check and see where Sabretooth was. Whether he would follow. He approached her cautiously, keeping his distance.

She kept the sword ready, trying to stay calm. She wasn't sure how one readied their spiritual power. Focus your chi? Say 'wax on, wax off' five times fast?

He grinned at her. "Ya got guts, frail… but nobody cuts me. Not alive, not dead, not anywhere."

But he wasn't attacking. She didn't push her luck by pointing this out. She just waited. He wanted to say something, or he wouldn't have approached her like this.

He nodded approvingly. "I'm gonna let you go on up to the next level. These hands are still tied. But when the devil gets so desperate he lets me have my way…"

His grin chilled her through to the bone. There was desperate violence promised there, the sort that would make a grown man weep. There was pain. There was a promise of so many foul things.

She steeled herself. "Whenever you're ready to get some," she hissed.

His smile was approving, again. As if he was proud of her for having the gumption to stand up to him; or as if he was anticipating really enjoying wiping that gumption out of her. Either way, she was certain it wasn't a pleasant smile.

So she darted forward, keeping her slash with the sword under control, a short, precise swing, so that she could pull it back and keep it up, defensively, between them. He howled when it cut him, a shallow cut on his leg, and he hopped back, light spilling out, splashing on the ground. Vibrantly liquid and evaporating quickly.

He tried to use his greater reach, leaping at her, but she swung again, taking both his hands off.

She had never used a sword before, but it wasn't about using a sword; not here. Here it was all about something else; something to do with inner strength, with will, with spirit.

She didn't fully understand it, but this monster in front of her didn't understand it all. In life he must have been fearsome, a terrible foe; but in death, he was relying too much on the physical. On what his body could do.

She hacked away at him till she had him on his knees, then administered the final blow.

4.

She caught up with Ben near the top. If he noticed that she had fallen behind, he didn't mention it. She had taken off the smock he had given her and made a makeshift bag, tying it to her belt.

He didn't ask about that either.

This next level was darker, with limited light. They were moving through tunnels, under the surface of some sort of battlefield. She could hear explosions in the distance, and the whole tunnels shook and quaked.

There were things moving in the tunnels with them, dark shapes at the edge of her vision. They never seemed to come close enough to see any of them.

"Dead heroes go to heaven," whispered Ben, when she asked him about it. "Dead villains go to hell. But most people are neither one nor the other. They're just… well, like me. They just did the best they could. Or they didn't. They survived. Big good, big evil, that's rare. Very rare. People fall into these shades of grey… some get to go to nice places. Some have to go to dark places, where they prey on each other. I don't know what level this is, but it doesn't seem like any kind of reward, does it?"

She wanted to argue the point. After all, they weren't in torment, were they? Weren't up above, on the surface, getting blown to bits?

Still, there was no use arguing the point.

"Is there anybody else who can help us?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Celestial beings don't interfere; and most people who've died get a little bit distant after a while. They become more preoccupied with the things that happen up here than down below. And besides, the only ones we could get to easily now are the evil ones."

They left the tunnels and continued climbing.

The next level was cold, but there were people here. They wore furs, and had igloos, but they also kept their distance.

"Why's everyone afraid of us?" asked MJ, scowling out at the people moving away from them in a slow wave.

"People who travel between aren't… they went to hell, but they're trying to leave. Usually they're desperate. Sometimes a little evil."

He sounded embarrassed, but she was getting used to this place. It only made her want to leave all the more. "Come on," she said.

It was important that she didn't stop to think. All she'd done for days now was run and fight, run and whine, run and kill things. Or try, anyway.

This wasn't her. She was an _actress_, dammit! She'd once played a vicious character, but she'd never had to fight like this. Never had to fear for her life like this.

Never had to try to unravel a reality-altering conspiracy like this.

It was over her head.

But she couldn't slow down and think. If she slowed down, then the devil would be right behind them. She knew this. Knew that to even hesitate would cost so much more than just her life.

There would be time for reflection when they actually got to a safe place.

A time to break down and cry. And perhaps some screaming to the heavens.

5.

Ten levels later, they rested. While they sat, she checked her bag. Sabretooth's head glowered at her from the interior, lips drawn in a silent snarl. "Stop that," she said absently, glancing over to Ben, who was sitting on a rock in the distance watching what looked like a spectacular sunset.

"I'm gonna do things to ya frail that'll make ya beg me ta cut yer head off," he promised.

"You know, I'm dragging your sorry butt—well, your head, anyway—right out of hell with me. You ought to thank me," she said, closing the bag again.

She knew this wasn't the smartest thing. The smartest thing would be to discover some way to permanently kill somebody. The smartest thing would involve a permanent solution.

But she couldn't do it. Not even to a wild dog like Sabretooth.

She was being weak, she knew. If her father could see her now, he'd be laughing his head off. Mary-Jane Watson, weak. Too soft to stay alive in a hard world.

He'd laughed when she said she wanted to act. He'd laughed every step of the way. She'd earned recognition, money, even good roles.

But he still laughed.

"I'm not weak," she muttered, keeping a tight grip on the sword.

She'd done the things that needed doing. She'd faced a homicidal monster. She'd faced Victor Creed.

Her hands started to shake, and she couldn't stop them.

6.

The next level, the devil himself came to stop them.


	4. Chapter 4

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

"Well, hi," said Mary Jane. She didn't bother waving the sword at the devil. She figured that might just make him mad.

He smiled at her. "Planning to go somewhere?" he asked, folding his arms patiently across his chest.

He was very polite, she had noticed. Exceedingly so. And she could feel the power radiating off him in waves from here, a heat that chilled her.

"I don't think I belong here," she said carefully. She didn't want to get him angry.

He smiled, and those pupilless eyes flickered to Ben, who was laboring to breathe. "He doesn't belong here," corrected the devil. "Do you?"

"M-Mephisto, please," begged Ben.

The demon arched his upper lip imperiously. Mary Jane was fairly certain that nobody ever got anything from him out of begging.

But she had an inkling that Mephisto wasn't here just to stop them. Perhaps he wanted to gloat; or perhaps he had something more he wanted from her. But if he wanted them stopped, he could do that as easily by sending an army.

He was giving her personal attention; that meant something. It meant that she was more important to him and his plans than he was letting on. It meant all the things Ben didn't understand about this situation were coming down on their heads.

So she smiled at him. It took him off guard, and for just a second she saw raw calculation in his eyes as he considered this. Just for a second she saw that he wasn't omniscient.

And her heart gave a naïve flutter of hope, which she quickly tried to tamp down. She continued smiling, glancing back to Ben. "Forgive him," she said. "He doesn't understand the rules of the game. Not yet."

"And you do?" questioned the big red man, all dressed in red, with red horns and those terrible eyes. And even if his whole costume seemed a little over the top, he sold it all with that voice.

God. If she ever got back to life, she would have all she needed to make the greatest movie about hell. Ever. If she could find an actor who could do that…

"Not all of them, but enough to know why you're here," she said, trying to ignore the fear gnawing at her belly. Trying to ignore the bag at her belt snuffling. "What do you want?"

"He cannot stay here in my realm any longer," replied Mephisto. "He had a certain amount of time, and it has expired. He has failed, and he is forfeit for it."

Ben grew pale. "I thought I had more time!"

"You wasted it all," Mephisto assured him. "Wasted too much finding her, and too much time everywhere you went. You cannot go back. You are mine." His lips pulled back in a smile, revealing teeth that were sharper than they had any right to be.

MJ laughed. "You came out here to do the job you could have sent any demon to do? I don't think you did. What else?"

The devil shrugged, but now there was laughter in his eyes. "He told you how terribly important you are, didn't he? Would you like to see what is happening now, in the world? Would you like to experience it?"

He reached out and touched her head.

2.

She wasn't herself. She was a thug, a big thug who was strong enough to break a normal man in half. She had a name, but she'd forgotten it.

And Spider-man had just laid her out flat. He was standing over her, wearing that ridiculous scrap of pajamas that showed every tiny muscle in his weak little body, but his fist had just ploughed into her like a jackhammer. She was staring in horror at her chest, where broken ribs were sticking out.

And he was saying something. Laughing. Taunting her about the bones. About her name.

She let out a sob of pain and tried to move back. The room was filled with other goons, but they were backing away from him slowly. They'd never seen this side of him.

She could hear desperation in his laugh, sorrow, but all that was secondary to the rage. He was lost in the moment.

He grabbed a chair, smashing it to pieces over her legs. She felt one break, heard her own yell, now a baritone that scared her. And he continued to taunt her, spewing insults.

Finally, after he left, she felt the world fading to darkness.

3.

She gasped, sitting upright. The devil was standing over her, chuckling.

"He didn't kill that man!" she protested.

"No; not yet," replied Mephisto. He chuckled again. "Do you know, he came so very close? But he pulled back, at the last minute. It won't be terribly long before he is a killer. The one line he has so feared crossing, and he will dance over it. Ah. Do you know, I had to give him a chance to avoid this? I did. You were very smart, bargaining away your happiness and your own soul in order to give him more."

Her face fell. "What?"

"Oh, yes. In the original deal you would have gone to heaven when you died. You were safe." He leaned forward. "But you bargained further. You bargained for a chance. One that vexed me sorely, but I could not deny without showing my hand."

She realized with a sinking feeling that Mephisto wasn't here to bargain; he had come here to gloat. "I made that bargain," she said flatly.

"You knew it was stupid, but you loved him so much that you gave away all you had so that he could be happy." Mephisto's smile was unpleasant, but now she understood why he smiled.

She had gambled and lost, and she didn't even remember it. She had gambled everything on keeping Peter happy, and lost it anyway. "So you gave him that chance, but he blew it?" she asked softly.

"Yes," replied the devil. His gaze flickered to Ben Parker. "You, sir, are lost; and your nephew is lost. And you have nobody to blame but yourself, Mary Jane Watson."

He snapped his fingers and a demon appeared, grabbing hold of Ben, who screamed in pain. MJ tightened her grip on the sword, ready to fight.

A glowing white form appeared beside Mephisto. "I'm afraid not, brother," it said, its voice smooth and pure, a marked change from the voices they'd heard down here up till now.

It moved forward, grabbing Ben, lifting him up. It then turned, facing Mary Jane. "You may keep the sword a while, but I will be wanting it back," the voice intoned solemnly.

Then they were both gone.

Mephisto sighed. "Well, we knew that a risk," he muttered. "All right. Get the girl, and go back."

He said it for her benefit, not the demon's. He wanted her to freak out. She wasn't sure why, but now she knew a few things she hadn't realized before.

She'd done something, before. In the reality that had been erased. Something that made the devil angry; something that had nearly saved Peter Parker. She'd bargained away her life and soul to give him a chance.

The devil was doing this because he was angry at her, because he wanted to hurt her, to rub in just how badly she had failed.

She ground her teeth together, trying to steel herself, to ignore the fear gnawing at her. Because she was Mary Jane Watson. (Mary Jane Parker? That was lame; she wasn't giving up her name, especially if she'd never actually been married to the dude, due to reality-altering)

She was Mary Jane Watson, and that man had been so important to her that she had forfeited her own soul to try to help him. She had given up everything for him, sacrificing herself for him.

She barely remembered him in this new reality, but for the first time the enormity of the love they must have shared was sinking in. For the first time, she realized how deeply she'd loved that man.

And she swung the sword at the devil.

He was gone in the blink of an eye, suddenly standing five feet away, glaring at her. There was unbridled hatred in those eyes, and she knew she wasn't beat yet.

"You can't touch me," she told the two demons, keeping the sword between her and them. "Not while I have an angel's sword in hand."

Mephisto laughed at her, a dark laugh. "You think that can protect you? You don't even know how to find the stairs out of here. You can't leave without a guide. You're trapped right here, in this realm."

He vanished without another word, taking his soldier with him.

MJ dropped to her knees, pulling out Creed's head. "Is that true?" she demanded.

He was quiet for a minute, chewing his lower lip and glaring at her. He wasn't stupid, and he was a complete sociopath. He was going to try to manipulate her into helping him advance his goals.

She slapped him, hard. "I have a sword here, and maybe it can kill you, somehow or other! Something worth experimenting with, right?"

She felt sick to her stomach. Threats like this weren't _her_.

But this place, with its terrible danger lurking around every curve and horrible disfigured monsters just tended to bring out the worst in her.

Creed sneered at her. "I don't know," he said. "I do know he don't give up easy unless he's already won."

She stuffed the head back into the cloth, tying it tightly. She hoped that he wasn't getting stronger while in there; she wasn't very sure how healing and a new body would come about in the tiny sack, but she also wasn't sure how it would come about in a larger context.

At any rate, she needed to understand other things better.

So she ran on, trying to find the stairs to the next level, or somebody who could explain the rules.

4.

There was something horrible about this place. Maybe it was the colors, that were just a little bit off. Maybe it was all the dead people, who had been here a very long time and did nothing but run away.

Would she become one of these, doing nothing but running away?

Losing everything that made her herself?

Time ceased to have meaning after a while. There was only the present, the now, the feeling that she was being hunted by the worst that hell had to offer.

Then she found the little girl, all alone in the middle of the place.

She was just a tiny, frail thing, chained to a stake driven firmly into the ground. She sat there stoicly, not crying, just watching the world approach with those big brown eyes. MJ had learned enough about this place to know that it wasn't a good idea to go over there. That it was some sort of trap; the girl was either bait, or else a monster in disguise.

But she was just a little girl…

MJ couldn't turn off her compassion, even knowing how stupid it was. How it might get her killed.

So she pulled out the head she kept at her side. "What's this, then?" asked Creed, snuffling the air.

"Some kind of trap, or bait, or something," she said. "What do you think."

He glowered down at the child. "I dunno, frail. The hell I stay in normally is all brimstone and lakes of fire. I got no experience here. Looks like… move just a little bit closer, but don't say nothing to it. This is still hell, even if it's the nice hell."

MJ moved in carefully, sword drawn and at her side.

Creed grinned appreciatively. "Oh, yeah. A little girl like that… she'd be dessert, I think."

MJ shuddered. "Just look out for any kind of traps. Little girl? Sweetie?"

The girl turned blank eyes on MJ. They were brown, and tear tracks scored the skinny girl's face. Her hair was brown too.

"Mommy?" she said plaintively. MJ felt her heart constrict.

"What the hell?" she demanded.

Creed sniffed. "You got any kids?" he asked.

"Not in this reality," she said. "Keep up. If this kid existed at all, she existed in the other world—the one where I married Spider-man."

But that didn't make any sense. If she'd had a kid in the other reality, would she have given the child up just for Peter's Aunt? No. This was beyond weird.

Creed chuckled suddenly, his sudden change in mood startling MJ. "What?" she growled.

"I think I know that smell," he replied. "That ain't no little girl. That's a devil. Let's get out of here."

A shapeshifting demon? But what did it hope to accomplish? MJ still hesitated, keeping the sword in her right hand ready to strike. "What do you want?" she asked.

The child's eyes changed, shifting colors suddenly to a dark black. It smiled gently at her. "Take me with you?" she asked.

"Don't do it," warned Creed.

"What do you really look like? Who are you?" asked MJ.

The girl's brow creased, and she looked down at herself. "This is your future, you know. Not your past, or your present, or anything else. But you gave that up. I don't know why that's what I look like. I don't have much control—can I come with you?"

"What is it?" MJ asked Creed.

"What, I'm a demon expert now? It smells like demon, that's all I know," he muttered. "I don't know what it is. Just leave it here; it's chained, it can't follow us."

The thing blinked at her again, and even with those ghastly black eyes it looked cute and normal. It scared MJ, more than a little. The smile slid slowly off its face, replaced by that curious blank expression. "Mommy?" it said again.

"Stop that!" snapped MJ.

The thing grinned, an innocent, child-like grin. "Sorry. I'm not going to hurt you, you know. I can try to take another form, if this one upsets you. But I don't know what it'll be."

"Take another form," said MJ harshly, starting to back away slowly. Creed was right. Something had put this thing in their path, and it wasn't as harmless as it looked.

It shifted, nothing but a formless void for a moment. Then it was a young man, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. It was Peter Parker.

Only it wasn't him. It wasn't right. The smile wasn't just shy and retiring; it was the same child-like innocence as the little girl.

MJ looked around, examining the whole landscape she could see. Something was very wrong here, very off. It had to be some kind of trap. "Creed, be helpful or you're just dead weight," she said.

"Just get out of here!" he snarled. There was some urgency in it now.

So she glowered down at the demon in front of them. "What are you?" she asked.

"A chimera; a will of the wisp. An insubstantial thought," it whispered. "Echoes of a future that will never be. I am regret; I am aches and pains. I am your son, your daughter, that you sold away unthinkingly. Consequences never known."

Then she knew the power of this thing. It wasn't in the lie of it, in showing her glimpses of the future and ensnaring her while a partner came after her. It wasn't in the puzzle of it. It was in the sheer truth of it.

Bone-deep she knew that it was showing her the truth. Every bit of her could see the truth, sense it. Smell it. Taste it.

And this was the harshest thing hell had shown her.

This demon wasn't here to run her down, or try to kill her. It was here to show her what she had done. To show her the consequences of actions. To show her how the decisions she'd thought were selfless had screwed up the whole world, had destroyed something beautiful.

How her decision to try to save an old woman had destroyed a future.

"She wasn't alive!" MJ protested. "Nothing more than a possibility out of millions! A quantum… quantum…"

But the little imp was smiling, and she knew no science could make that smile stop searing her so deeply. Because she was dead now, perhaps, she was able to feel such things as truth and honesty. Things so often hidden in life.

And she knew now that she had paid a much higher price than any she had thought she was paying. More than her own happiness, her own future. More than anything. She could see two children, two bright and shining individuals, snuffed out of existence.

Her stomach hurt, but she forced herself to walk away from the demon, and the plaintive cries of 'mommy' that followed her for a very long time.

5.

Time passed. Without a guide she was trapped on this level, this particular circle of hell. It was a world of forests filled with darker things, and denizens who ran away. She amused herself for a while with thinking about what these people had been done to be sentenced to an eternity like this. Cut others off in traffic? Perhaps slapped their mother?

It couldn't be too horrible.

This place also had boundaries. It took her time to work them all out, but it was a rough circle, with the forests at the middle. It was the strange hills around the forest where she stayed, along with the other lost souls.

Unlike them she didn't camp in any one place, staying on the move. She knew that there were things here hunting her, specifically. Several times she'd heard the plaintive cries of 'mommy' in the distance, and knew Regret, as she'd come to call the demon, was staying on her trail.

Creed grew more and more agitated, but she was beginning to understand the monster in him. He could never sate himself, not here. His eternal punishment was to crave more and more the thing he could never have. The kill that would be always out of his reach.

She found herself talking to him one night, his head propped up on a desiccated stump. "If you could go back to life, is there anybody back there you cared about?" she asked. He raised an eyebrow at her. "I know you're a killer and all, but even killers have to have somebody…"

"There was a girl, once, who made things… different," he said, smirking. "I killed her. And there's one guy… he's sort of family. And he's… fun. He killed me, this time."

She made a disgusted noise in her throat. "That's all the humanity you have left? A grudge-match?"

He laughed. "I don't much like animals, frail. They're weak, and stupid, and vindictive. They do make funny noises when you cut on them, though. No, give me the animals any day. They'll kill you or lick you, and won't screw with your head."

It was absurd to her that this certifiable serial killer could be called a _cat person_. "Hell," she muttered.

He grinned widely. "That's where we are. Don't forget it."

It was a little more difficult for her to re-cauterize the wound at the base of his neck with the sword this time. It felt a little bit more like he was a real person, not just a monster. She wished she hadn't asked him.

The next day, a new person arrived in Hell. And immediately tried to kill MJ.


	5. Chapter 5

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

Note: NANOWRIMO is upon us! No updates in November. (this was lying around, unfinished; I meant add another sub-chapter, but decided better to post it this way than wait!) See you in December, folks! Hopefully with 50,000 words of publishable fare under my belt. Ciao!!

1.

The weird thing was Regret coming to warn her. Today Regret was a teenager, looking like an absurd mixture of MJ and Peter Parker. "They're looking for you, mom!" cried the teenager, in a voice that kicked off so many different instincts in MJ it was absurd.

Still, she drew the sword and Creed's head at the same time. "Look sharp," she said to the head. "We have something going down."

"What's the demon doing here?" he asked, eyeing the teenager, who kept her distance.

"Don't know," said MJ shortly. "We're going on the move. Just keep your eyes open."

He was less helpful than she had originally hoped when she took his head.

Regret took off running in a zig-zag pattern. MJ didn't follow the apparition, knowing all too well that nobody here was truly her ally.

Instead she set off at an angle. Creed was grumbling, complaining. Again. She couldn't afford to drop any bit of the edge he provided, though, so she kept him out.

It was the devil himself who stalked her over the landscape, finding her insultingly easily. He was angry. "Come with me," he said.

And in this place, here, she couldn't argue. She went with him.

He led her to a small pool, and waved a hand over it. "Things are spiraling out of control," he said.

"What are you showing me?" she asked cautiously, looking down and in.

This was insanity. She knew the devil only wanted to make her suffer; and he already had won, having harvested her soul. Why was he showing her anything.

He grinned largely at her. "Oh, my dear child. My plans are so much larger than you; but I think we have an interest in common. We both want to help the dear boy survive. A new foe is rising, one who could kill Spider-man. Your dear husband. Remember?"

A wave of memories flooded through her, things that had never happened. A marriage; a wedding; pregnancy.

A baby girl.

She gasped, doubling over. Regret had been right; she'd had a daughter! She was a mom.

"He's going to die," said Mephisto harshly. "A group of enemies have joined forces; Osborn is meddling to help them, and he's going to die a horrible, terrible death. They've brought out more firepower than they used to fight the Hulk, last time. They're going to kill him. Do you understand?"

But he'd told her too much when he was gloating before. She might love this man, might want to save him; but if she helped the devil save him, he was going to destroy the world as they knew it. He was going to kill a god, an Avenger, and plunge the world into a dark age, giving Satan all the souls he wanted.

She smiled at Mephisto. "You want to make a deal with me? Look how well our last deal ended!"

He scowled at her. "The problem is that there are certain rules; checks and balances. When I directly offered Peter a deal, the one he took so foolishly, it gave somebody up above a chance to give that sword to Ben Parker, who gave it to you. Every time I act, I give them space to act. If I do anything directly to save him… well. Then his suffering ends, and I can't have that, can I?"

She glowered at him. "You're the devil; since when do you care about suffering?"

He smirked. "When suffering can net me so many souls in the end, dear child. Keep up. So, Peter Parker… you won't go back and save him, even though I'm giving you that chance?"

This was hard. Harder than she'd expected. But she knew he was trying to tempt her. And even though it broke her heart, just imagining Peter Parker being hurt—being killed—she knew she had to stay strong. For the world. For the entire concept of heroism. For whatever reason it was that Peter had started wearing that costume. Anything else was inexcusable.

She glared at him.

The devil smiled. "You are a smart young lady, I see. You understand I didn't come here alone, didn't you?"

Something was behind her. Creed growled out a warning, but she'd already realized it, sensing it. They hadn't been there a moment ago, but they were now. She could feel something sharp pressed into the base of her spine. A cold hand wrapped around her neck, one finger resting right against the pulse-point at the corner of her jaw.

She didn't turn around, but she did casually rotate her left hand, turning Creed's head to face back.

Creed growled. "It's you, I think," he said finally.

Mary-Jane turned her head. It wasn't herself; it was her daughter. Regret had given her that face already, that too-familiar face. The face that Mephisto had taken from her; the face she had sold away.

"Oh, that's my favorite part!" purred the devil. "The moment you learned what you did wrong, that was good. Very good. But this moment, face to face with your daughter? She's _mine_, now, you know. Mine. My soldier. My best."

Mary-Jane's heart couldn't break, not after this long in Hell. There was nothing left inside her but stone. She was sure of it.

So why did it break? Why did the harshness in those brown eyes make her so sad? Why did the sneer on those lips make her want to break down and cry?

It didn't matter. Not now. She had to remain strong a little while longer. "I won't make any deal unless you make the terms explicit," she said, keeping her voice as loud as possible.

He chuckled. "Of course not. What do you want more than anything else? A chance. An opportunity to fix what you've bungled. I want you to continue to unravel. So what I propose is a sporting bargain. If you win, you will gain Peter Parker's soul, and his future, his destiny—and this young lady as well. I place all that on the scales. If you lose, you will have caused the end of days to begin, and the reign of the Spider-man. Do you understand?"

She shook her head. "What do I have to do?" she asked harshly.

"Agree to save Peter Parker from death," hissed the devil. "I will give you the tools you need. All you have to do to turn this against me is save him from death and restore his heroism. If you are able to do that, to beat the devil as his own game… then you get it all. You get her."

The girl let go, moving around Mary-Jane. She was painfully thin, and wearing the kind of tight leather clothes that MJ knew from first-hand experience might look good on the big-screen but were painful to wear.

She looked to be maybe fourteen years old. "Why that age?" asked Mary-Jane. Her voice was tight, very tight.

Mephisto chuckled. "You mean, why do I put her in this form? I don't. She's a real person, who was… more real than you realize. In events that never happened, she was… is… missing from you. You believed her dead. Do you realize you have a child, out there, alive? Or did, until you agreed to wipe that slate clean. This child, who was perfectly alive… was scratched out. And then she passed into my hands… however, if you want her back… if you wish this soul to be yours… all you have to do is agree to keep Peter Parker alive. Alive long enough to continue what he's started."

"I don't understand," whispered Mary-Jane, but she was beginning to understand.

The devil was using the truth as a weapon. He'd used it before, against them. He did want suffering; but that wasn't his primary goal. He'd used that truth to convince them that the only price to get May back was their marriage, their happiness. But it was only a secondary goal within his master plan to use Peter.

And the truth of her daughter… this was why he'd sent Regret after her, that demon harrying her with visions of this daughter. Because she had unknowingly forfeited an innocent soul into his hands. She had erased her own daughter's existence.

And now she had the power to make it right.

She drew a deep breath. "I'll do it… on one condition."

He sneered. "Go ahead."

She lifted Creed's head high. "I'll need allies. I want Creed brought back to life with me, and bound to me service. And I want my daughter brought back with me."

Mephisto's grin just widened. "The monster you've come to understand well enough to rely on, and the daughter you never knew you had? Gladly, girl, gladly."

There was a flash of light, and everything was gone.

2.

Everything was cold and wet. There was pressure, all around, pushing at her. She struggled against it, but couldn't breathe. For a second everything was dark, and she thought the devil had tricked her.

Then a strong hand wrapped around her neck, pulling her through the darkness and up out of the water. She gasped for air, struggling against the hand.

"Stop it, frail!" growled Creed. "We gotta problem."

She managed to get her eyes open through the stinging. It wasn't water all around her; it was red, sticky, and what was in her mouth was sweet and terrible. It was a shallow pool of it, but it was blood. There were corpses strung up above them, blood dripping down on them.

A black-clad man was standing to one side; he smiled. He was pale, and looked sickly. "Now it begins," he whispered darkly. "I have brought you to life as my personal demons, to destroy those who wronged me."

Mary-Jane struggled to her feet. She felt wobbily, weak. "Creed… do something about him," she muttered.

Her discovery that she was naked was eclipsed by her discovery that an open-ended command was followed with violence. Creed gutted the man casually, holding him up by the neck and shaking him while he died, chuckling.

Mary-Jane sank to her knees, trying not to let the horror of this place close in on her. That was when she found the third body underneath her, and it squirmed away. She managed to grab one limb, but then it pulled so hard that she was thrown forward, slammed into the floor.

For a second there was nothing but flashing lights and pain. Then she heard more movement behind her, slams and grunts and shrieks. She rolled over carefully.

Creed was on his knees, the little holding him there in a headlock. She was growling, a feral sound from low in her throat, and he was choking, gasping for air.

"No!" said Mary-Jane, getting up very slowly. "Little… young… um, don't hurt him. Don't hurt him. We need him…"

The girl slowly let go, and Creed pushed himself up to his feet, stepping back from her. He was naked too, and for a split-second Mary-Jane was distracted by this, and she looked away from the girl.

Then the girl started to run.

"No!" yelled MJ. "Don't let her get away!"

Creed sprang like a big cat. When he moved, it wasn't like in hell. He'd been dangerous there, but not like this. A man that size shouldn't be a flash of lightning, taking her down in mid-stride. A man like that shouldn't be all leanness and muscle.

But the girl twisted in mid-stride, jumping over him. She moved like a jack-in-the-box, there and gone, swinging over him and pushing him into the wall behind her.

She moved like her father.

MJ didn't even know her name, but she still managed to get between the girl and the door. "Wait, please!" she begged. "I'm sorry—so sorry—I just want to help you!"

The girl snarled wordlessly, jumping for her throat.

MJ let her come, spreading her arms out wide. It was an uncalculated ploy. It was stupid. It was vulnerable.

But this was her daughter, whether the teenager realized it or not.

That fist stopped inches from her face. The teenager glared her, puzzled. "I can beat your big man any time!" she snarled. "Don't think he'll protect you!"

How did you just tell a wounded girl who'd been stuck in a literal hell that you were her mother. "I don't want to hurt you. I'm your… your… I don't know what they told you, the devil, wherever you were before that, but I'm…"

"I know who you are!" snapped the girl. "I know you gave up on me."

"I never even knew you existed!" wailed MJ.

The girl grinned, an ugly grin with a lot of hurt behind it. "You're nothing to me. Nothing but an abandoner, a runner. A hider. You're a monster, like all of them. All of them! Nothing different in you, no matter how you smile and grin."

MJ took a deep breath, kneeling in front of the girl. She glanced at Creed, who was starting to climb to his feet. "Creed, go scout out the perimeter. Don't hurt anybody unless they threaten us. Go."

He moved away with that animal grace and agility. MJ smiled at the girl. "What's your name?"

"May."

"May, listen. You know where I'm from. You know where I was. You know what things are like there. I couldn't. You know I couldn't! If I had known, I would have been there for you. You know it's true, May! You know it!"

May's face was inscrutable. There was nothing there she could see, nothing to let her know if she was getting through.

MJ took a deep breath. "Listen, I know you're… you have power. You're strong. You could survive on your own out here, couldn't you? Let me help you. Please. I owe it to you… I can help you. I know this world. May? Please?"

The girl grimaced. "Let go of me," she said.

MJ stepped back, looking around in disgust. "We need some clothes."

It made her uncomfortable that Creed had seen her naked. It was even worse that he'd seen May naked. They couldn't afford to trust him, no matter what kind of control the devil had given her over him. He was a wild animal, a monster.

He was also the most useful weapon in her arsenal.

3.

Finding a place to stay was easy. As was getting clothes and spending money. MJ tried not to pay too much attention to Creed's methods, although she instructed him not to kill unless it was necessary to keep them safe.

He was still having a blast.

She ended up wearing an outfit that was all function, no form. A tee that was too big and pants that were too tight. May ended up in a knee-length skirt and a blouse that was just a hair too bright.

But somehow Creed ended up in black leather studded with metal.

They had to walk across town to find a place he knew. "Where are we?" she asked after he pointed out a seedy motel they could crash at until they figured out their next step.

He shrugged. "Didn't ya notice? The devil brought us right back to New York, frail. Middle of the Spider's stomping grounds. I've caught traces of his scent five or six times. Ya know, I've thrown down with him a time or two? Tougher than he looks—tougher than his wisecracks sound."

Once they had a place to stay, they all got showers to get the last of the filth they had been spawned in off them.

After the shower MJ took a few minutes to examine May while the girl was carefully dressing. Her hair was darker than MJ's, a dark red that was almost brown. Her eyes were blue, bright blue. A familiar blue, one that tugged at a part of MJ that wasn't even truly her own.

"What do you remember?" she asked May.

May glowered at her. "What do I remember? What do you think. I remember Hell."

"Before that," said MJ, trying to hold down the faint nausea she felt at even a casual mention of hell.

It was surreal. She had died and gone to hell, and now she was back. Like one of those heroes for whom death was a revolving door. Like some kind of massive world-changing force, or like a villain.

She'd even brought her very own card-carrying evil villain along with her.

May sneered at her. "What do I remember? I remember not having a mommy. I remember being held hostage by people I didn't like. What else is there?"

MJ sat down on the bed, trying to ignore the stains covering it, the threadbare blanket. Trying to ignore what a dive they were in. It was surprisingly easy after hell. "I don't fully remember the other world; but I don't remember you at all in that other world," she said firmly. "If I'd known about you… If I did, and I let you go, then I was a bad mother, and I'm sorry. I don't remember. But I don't want to be a bad mother; and I love you."

"You don't even know me!" snarled May.

MJ shook her head. "Who knows a baby that comes to them for the first time? You don't know. You just love it. I'm not… We're not even doing the right thing, in this world, right now. You know that, right? We're playing a game, and the stakes… the stakes are high. I don't… You saw the deal I made with the devil, didn't you?"

She couldn't believe that particular phrase was now in her vocabulary. Worse, if she thought too hard about it, she knew that it was really _the second deal_ she'd made with the devil.

She was being roped deeper and deeper into this twisted, sick game. She was being buried in it.

May sneered. "Nobody wins against him. Nobody."

"I had to!" said MJ. "I know it's stacked up against me… but I couldn't leave you there. Couldn't! I…"

There was a hint of something in May's eyes. An awareness, perhaps. A vulnerability. But the girl covered up, and fast, turning away.

MJ clamped her lips shut, trying to process that. It wasn't just that May disliked her. MJ knew very well that time spent in hell was time spent learning the very worst of what was in people. Learning to hide weaknesses, to try to be tough.

So MJ tried a different approach, measuring her words carefully. "I know you've been through a lot. I'm not asking you to trust me, or to love me. Just… stay with me. Give me a chance to prove that I'm not lying."

May sighed, a cynical and brusque sigh. Coming from that tiny frame it sounded like a curse. "We can't trust your trained dog, you know."

"I know!" said MJ quickly, nodding. "He's a monster. We all know it. But we're outnumbered, out-gunned. We don't even know what the situation is. And we're working against the devil! I can't…"

May was smiling. MJ wasn't sure if the girl understood irony or sarcasm, but somehow the smile cut right through the middle of that. "When you try to play the devil's game, you play into his hands," whispered May. "When you try to outsmart him, you give him ammunition. You wanted a gun to use against him; you gave him a warrior in our camp, one only controlled by the devil, not us. We can order him around, but it's the devil who leashed him. What happens when you start to win? You think the devil will let you keep that leash on him?"

The statement was well thought out. It effectively destroyed any idea of trusting Creed.

But that wasn't why MJ nearly started to cry. It was the implicit us versus the devil hidden within May's message.

She managed to smile.

"We can beat him," she said.

And it made sense to her.


	6. Chapter 6

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

Figuring out how much time had passed in the real world was a high priority. Creed placed that down around number three or four. He was more interested in finding paying mercenary work, finding a way to justify killing people, and stockpiling weapons.

It was more than a little tempting to just take May and go for a walk through a park. Probably Central, as bad an idea as that normally was. After all, May had superpowers. What could go wrong?

Except May had spent time in hell, and both of them were jumpy around people and too likely to resort to violence. MJ could just see the two of them accidentally mugging somebody and getting in trouble with the law. And what did you do then? She was legally dead, as far as she knew, and May didn't have any sort of legal identity at all.

They were messing with big forces here. Forces of good and evil. Primal forces.

MJ was an actress. She'd once had a big role on a soap opera. A soap opera! It wasn't even funny how little that job had prepared for this.

So they stayed inside, and tried to figure out how long each of them had been dead. They pored over newspapers, trying to figure out what was going on.

It was a different world than the one they'd left. "Norman Osborn is the who-what-how now?" demanded Creed, slamming down the front page.

MJ took the paper from him, glancing over to May, who was curled up in the corner of the room, cat-napping. "What now?"

"Apparently Osborn's in charge of all this super-hero crap happening everywhere," snarled the big assassin.

"That makes you angry?" she asked neutrally, scanning the article.

"Angry? Naw. It makes me think I missed out, though. He put together a team loaded up with all the nasties—bad folks. I shoulda been on that team! He put the screws to your boy-toy. I shoulda been there! He put some hurt on Logan… that, that really was my department."

"Logan?" Again, her memories jangled. There were memories of this, the other memories. The unreal ones. She could see a face. But these memories were just echoes, they weren't real. She didn't have even the faintest idea who he was talking about.

"Wolverine? You know, short guy. Claws." He stuck three fingers out.

"Oh, right. The sexy one. I remember him." She scanned the article. "And your contacts don't know anything?"

"I ain't made contact with anything you could call contacts," he replied. He glanced over to May, scratching his nose. "Everybody's gone to ground, and I can't even find out who's in charge of what now. There's some big gang war, and everybody's drawing sides. Near as I can figure, there's nobody at all playing big hero… nobody at all. The Spider is going dark… and now there's some kind of group out looking for him. Heroes, or something. Dunno."

MJ sighed. "I guess… is there anybody who knows… heaven and hell, and all that? Life and death? Somebody we can consult?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

She was irked by that. "You don't know?"

He grinned, showing sharp canines. "People like me, we do our job. Just get through the day. What do I know about life after death? All I know is how to kill people. I've been through dozens of special ops projects. Dozens of different governments. I've killed more people than most… that's what I know. If you ask me, I can get you an appointment with whoever's in charge a` black ops right now. That's easy."

She sighed. "Creed…"

"Not saying I don't wanna help; just saying I don't play with your Doctor Strange types or your… uh… I don't actually… uh…"

"Right, got it." The reference to Doctor Strange encouraged her for a second. "What about…?"

"Last I heard, he disappeared. Used to keep a house around here; thought that might be worth looking into, but it ain't here no more. They say he's dead, or something. I knew you'd want to go tampering with the rules some more, but nobody knows how. I checked."

She sighed, turning to watch May, who had stood up and was climbing up the wall. It was strange to watch, but it was also a bit unnerving. It was as if MJ had seen this a thousand times before—as if it was familiar to her. But it wasn't.

Another memory bleeding over from the other world? Or just a bit of déjà vu? She couldn't tell the difference any more.

"So, what now?" she asked.

He tapped a finger against his nose. "There's what I would do, and what you want to do, right? I want to find out who his enemies are and take them down, take them down hard, take them down permanently. That's what I do. You… you'd go straight to him, wouldn't ya? Go to the Spider, talk to him?"

She shrugged. "I mean… I know things have been changed, but I did know him, before. I'm not sure… Harry. The devil said something about Harry. I can go to Harry. I know him; he's a friend."

May was over their heads now, hanging by her fingertips right above them, her hair falling straight down in short, jagged, strands. She wouldn't let MJ fix the haircut, wouldn't hear about trying to find a barber. Washing it was apparently more than enough for her.

"If the devil said something, we shouldn't," she said. Her voice was clear and strong.

Again, there was that déjà vu. The voice was so familiar, so right… it had shades of Peter, shades of her own voice. But she'd never talked to Peter that much, never been so close to him.

"What would you do?" MJ asked May, crossing her arms against the chill in the air. "Would you try to handle his enemies? Would you go to him with this?"

"Can we go to him with this?" asked May obliquely. "Wouldn't that break the accord with the devil? Wouldn't Mephisto just swallow us up?"

Creed shrugged. "Dunno."

MJ bit down on her lower lip, trying to ignore the coldness in her own belly, the fear. "What would you do, then? Fight?"

May dropped to the ground, landing lightly on her feet. She grinned broadly at MJ. "I'm okay with finding his enemies and doing bad things to them."

She was just a kid, and it broke MJ's heart to hear her say that. But MJ just nodded, glancing at Creed, and wondered just how she was supposed to fix this.

2.

MJ went out with May the next day, out to try to find some way to make contacts, to speak to the people she had known. To find somebody and let them know she wasn't dead.

This was more difficult than she'd thought. Friends and family? She might not be truly back from the dead, and she was tangled up in this … thing. She didn't want to drag them down with her.

Further, how did you start that conversation? 'Know how I was dead? Well, surprise! I got better! I'm sure you saw my mangled body—did it look pretty in the coffin?'

No, that was a conversation she was dreading. Especially with her mother… her aunt…

Her mother. God. Now that MJ had some idea what it was like to lose a child—and not just in the euphemistic sense, either. She had misplaced May. Lost her like you lose your keys.

If this wasn't so horrifying it might have been funny.

They walked through the park, among the trees. It was green here, and alive. It smelled of life. It smelled right.

They were both on edge.

MJ pointed. "There. That's where we're going." It was a mid-sized building at the edge of the park. Red brick faded to brown, graffiti… not the best neighborhood. Better than where they'd been staying.

May walked with no fear at all in her step, and MJ couldn't really blame her. Just what kind of powers did the girl have? Presumably they mirrored her father somehow, but MJ wasn't entirely clear on just what kind of powers he had. She had an idea he was strong, fast, agile, and that he flew around the city somehow.

And she had nagging images in her head of him, things she had never seen. Things she had learned in another life, one that had been erased. But none of that was concrete. None of that she could remember well enough to pin down.

In fact, all she could seem to remember now was that May had dodged Creed's blows without even looking at him, that she had overpowered the big man by brute strength, and that she could jump across the room, hang from the ceiling.

She had to stop and stand still for a moment, looking away from May. She couldn't remember Peter at all, not the one she had been married too. How could she approach him with all this? A daughter he'd never met, a wife he couldn't remember? He would think she was crazy, or some kind of mind-screw.

For the first time she realized that she wouldn't be able to approach him with the truth. She wouldn't be able to ask for his help.

May stopped and turned around. "What?" she asked, annoyed. Impatient.

It was usually difficult to remember her age. She looked like a girl of fourteen, but there was too much knowledge in her eyes. She'd seen too many horrors to every truly be a child again. Behind those eyes she was ageless.

MJ shrugged. "Nothing."

The apartment was empty. He had moved out, moved on, and MJ felt chills go up her back. If she couldn't get help here, where could she? Who else was there?

But there was a forwarding address. His shop. He'd moved out of his apartment, but kept the mail going to his shop?

She went to the little coffee shop.

He was there, sitting sprawled out on a stool, staring up at the ceiling.

"Hey, Harry," she said.

He looked at her. He blinked very slowly a few times. "Uh, MJ. Did you know you're dead?" he asked, his tone very light. As if he was afraid he was losing his own mind, or else perhaps just afraid she would vanish.

She nodded. "It's… a long story. Mistaken identity, the hospital, a coma, and my GOD, Harry! You look like…"

The word hell sat in the back of her mouth, tasting of brimstone.

He smiled, and somehow, illogically, she wanted to cry. He smiled and it was an accepting smile, a happy smile. He smiled at her because he loved her, because she came back from the dead to him.

He jumped up off the stool, rushing to her side, and embraced her tightly. "God, kid! God! We thought you were dead!" His voice was choked with emotion, close to overflowing.

She tried to hug him back, but it was a bit awkward. She felt overwhelmed by his nearness, his presence. Hell had made her hate to be near enough for somebody to stab you. Hell had taught her wariness and caution.

He let go, stepping back. He had always been in tune to other people's moods, more so than most. "MJ… what happened to you?" he whispered.

She shrugged. "It was… it was bad. Never mind."

He looked to May then. "And who's this…?" he asked, but the words died, and his forehead furrowed.

MJ looked back at May, who looked so much like she had fifteen years ago, at the same age. May, the spitting image of her father as well. May, with all that anger and fury. May, just a kid, but with her parentage all over her face.

He put a hand over his mouth. "Oh, MJ," he said, breathing out slowly. "I never knew…"

"I never knew either—it's not—it's complicated."

He glanced at her, and he looked a little lost. "Everything's complicated," he said bitterly. "Is this about him, again? Is this about Norman? Come inside. The back room. It's not bugged—I know, I check."

She recoiled. "You check?"

He laughed. "Come on, MJ. Norman Osborn's son? This has been… you know, right?"

She shook her head. "I mean, I read in the paper's he's the world's top cop, yeah," she said. "But that's just… it's like… it's not… is it?"

"I don't know what it is, but it's bad," said Harry. He was filled with rage suddenly. "He's been using me, using Peter… He's probably going to be the next president, you know. Every time somebody puts something on TV showing how he's doing something bad, he does something good. He saves America's bacon. Come on, let me get you something to eat—you look terrible."

3.

Talking to Harry was instructive in many ways. Firstly, Harry was angry at his father, who'd tried to manipulate him and possibly even kill him. Secondly, Harry was unstable. He was already on the edge, and it would only take a little push to make him explode.

MJ tried to calm him down a little bit. But at the end of the day, when they left him alone in his shop, MJ was worried about him. Terribly worried.

"He has power too, you know," said May.

"What?"

"Harry. I can feel it. Something in his blood… I can feel my skin tingle around him. The way it does around dangerous people. The way it does around Creed, or the devil. I know he's dangerous. I know he's… well. He's got power."

MJ shivered. More power? More danger? "His dad was the Green Goblin before he became… whatever he is now. Is Harry…?"

"Maybe."

MJ shivered even harder. Was this all part of the devil's plans? She had trusted Harry, had hoped he would be able to help them. But he was a part of the problem too, he was dangerous. "Can we trust him?"

May glared at her. "How should I know? You trust Creed, even though you have to know he's part of the devil's plan to control us, to make sure you can't fix anything! How do you think that'll end? You meet the Spider, he sees you have one of his old enemies in your pocket… he assumes only a villain works with Creed…. Don't you see? The devil has us all where he wants us! He wants to keep the Spider alive… maybe the only way to save the world is to kill the Spider ourselves, to keep the dark future the devil wants from happening!"

Those words scared MJ more than anything else ever could have. "No…"

May sighed. "Or maybe that's what he wants us to think. Maybe there's nothing wrong or dark with the Spider."

"Stop calling him that! He's… he's your father!"

"Some father. Bargained away my life, your life, your marriage, for his aunt."

"It… It wasn't like that!"

"How would you know? You can't remember!" said May contemptuously. "Anyway, that's not important. What's important is that we've been here a while and we still know nothing about the people going to kill the Spider."

That gave her an idea.

"No… no. You're right. We have Creed, and he's one of the bad guys. We can have him go out… scout for work. Find work. The work… if they're putting together a team of killers to take Peter down, they'll want him. We have him join them, learn the plan… we can have him do that, right? Then we'll know the plan, at least."

May smiled. It was an innocent, joyful smile, and it broke MJ's heart a little bit. "That's a good idea," she said, nodding. "Yeah, we'll do that."

It occurred to MJ suddenly that May was avoiding calling MJ by name, or by title. Or by anything. And what was the right thing to call your estranged mother, who had dragged you back from hell?

She smiled at May, a bit hesitantly. "I know… I know you… I think you… uh, what I mean is that if you don't want to call me mom it's okay if you just call me MJ. That'd be all right."

May blinked a few times, surprised by this sudden change of subject. "I don't—I didn't—"

"It's okay! Really, it's okay. We're in a weird spot, right? I mean, it couldn't get much weirder."

"There's the Spider," said May, pointing up at the sky.

MJ looked up quickly. He was swinging by, far overhead. Just a speck.

"Can you do that?" she asked quietly, plaintively.

May shook her head. "The webbing thing? That's not one of my powers. Maybe he has more powers than me. I could probably jump my way up there—I'm fast. But with the webbing, he gets places quick. Almost as quick as flying. Dunno."

"Can you… feel him?"

"A little. Not like the others—completely different, really. It's… it's strange. It's like… well, I can almost… it's like… like there were two of me. He feels a lot like me. I don't know how to describe it."

"Do you think he can feel you, the same way?"

May sighed. "I don't know. If he did, wouldn't he swing back? I would. If I felt something like that."

4.

There was something soothing and healing in brushing May's hair. It was about as close as the girl would let MJ get to her, about as much contact as either of them could stand these days. It was utilitarian; her hair desperately needed brushing.

MJ worked slowly and gently, prolonging the moment. "You know, I have a sister… a father… they still think I'm dead. I wonder if I should let them know… file paperwork. Pretend like I did with Harry that it was all… that's I'm still alive."

"I don't think I'm just like him, you know," said May, changing the subject very abruptly. Apparently not wanting to talk about family.

"Peter? How do you mean?"

May held up a hand. "Besides the web thing, I've been watching the TV. Seeing what he does. I think I'm faster than him—maybe more agile. And I can sense things—I mean, when Harry said to you that he was sorry, before we left? He was lying. He wasn't sorry. I can tell that. I can tell things about people. I don't think he can. I mean, I think he has some of the same sense, same powers, but it must be different."

"Watching him?"

"I told Creed to record any footage of him on the VCR—he went and picked up some CDs. Apparently villains like to see him in action before they fight him… he's strong, too. I mean, stronger than me. I saw him punch the big rhino guy right off his feet… I can't do that."

"You sure?"

May turned her head so that she could see MJ out of the corner of her eye, giving her a withering glare. "I think I know how hard I can hit, _MJ._"

It was the first time she'd used any name or title of any sort to refer to her mother, and even though it was meant to be biting, MJ smiled. She couldn't help it. "Okay."

May sighed. "But you see the problem, here, right? I don't have exactly his powers, so even if I do meet him, how do I convince him we're not lying? Because you said before he would think we are. Why would he think we are?"

"Because the truth is impossible."

"Can't be impossible; we did it."

"Okay, not impossible. But it sounds impossible."

"Huh. Okay. What do you want to tell him? A different lie? A lie that sounds believable?"

"I don't know." MJ kept brushing, putting one hand tentatively on top of May's head. "It's all impossible, all strange."

Creed returned, carrying a sheaf of papers. "Okay, good news, bad news," he said gruffly. His large presence invaded the small island of familial comfort MJ had carved out of the grungy apartment in his absence. She cringed as May put her game face back on, the angry face that hell had put on her.

"Go ahead," said May.

"So, I found out, and they are putting that team together. To kill him. Osborn's folks. The, uh, government. The good guys. It's gonna be soon. Anyway, that's the good news. I got all I could on it. Bad news? They don't want me. They're doing this… uh… straight and narrow? Goody-two-shoes? He's the bad guy, they're the good guys… so, they want no shades of grey. It's going to be all up-right citizen types taking him down."

MJ felt like swearing. "What can we do?"

Creed shrugged. "Well, we got all these nice papers. Leave `em for him to find?"

May shook her head. "Then he'll wonder who meant for him to find them. Can you just go to him, tell him you learned about this?" She turned around to face MJ. "Give him the papers, tell him you're worried?"

"Right. I'm dead, so he'll assume I'm a shapeshifter. And he'll question it. No… better idea. Creed. You want to go fight him?"

Creed frowned. "How's that advance your agenda?"

"Take those papers with you. Make it look real, but make sure he wins. When he asks you why… tell him you were insulted. Turned down by these bozos. That you just wanted to take them down a peg. Prove you were better than them. Do you know who's on the team?"

"I know they got the sentry, their fake-out spider-man, their fake-out hawk-eye, their fake-out wolverine…"

"Fake?" Now MJ was more confused.

"I dunno. They got people imitating them… but how the hell do you imitate Logan? I dunno. I mean, Hawkeye is easy. Just get a bow and a purple costume. But Spider-man… he's got powers. How do you fake those?"

May smirked. "I got enough of them I could be him."

Creed leered at her. "You got too much, kid. You get in a spandex leotard, everybody'd know right off you ain't no Spider-_man_."

She flushed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Shut up."

"Creed!" snapped MJ, half-rising. Angry. "Not appropriate for a—uh—?"

"Yeah, you don't know how old she is either," replied the villain, smiling wide enough to show teeth that were too sharp. "Anyways, you want me to get on that right now?"

"How will you find him?" asked MJ quickly.

He shrugged. "I was figuring I'd go menace some innocents publically… that usually gets him out of the woodwork pretty quick."

"I can find him," said May.

Both Creed and MJ stared at her for a second silently. She smiled, glad to be able to surprise them. "I can tell when I'm close to him. Just let me wander around—I can find him." She turned to MJ. "Creed and I can go fast if we don't have you along—we can find him quick."

MJ considered it. It was insane—but no more so than their other options. "Don't let him see you—just Creed," she ordered.

Creed nodded. "Make it real, make him win, let him know everything," he said, tucking the folded papers into a coat pocket. "Anything else, _mom_?"

"Let her get hurt, and I'll send you straight back to hell."

And it scared MJ how much she meant it.


	7. Chapter 7

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

A/N: As a plot point, further on in this story MJ draws a completely erroneous conclusion about Peter's powers based entirely on May's powers. Somebody is bound to remember that she should know better, based on her knowledge of the original timeline. But don't forget, she doesn't REALLY remember the original timeline. That's plot-important, as they say…

1.

Waiting around while Victor Creed, the Sabretooth, went around with her daughter to find her husband-from-another-timeline was killing MJ.

May was hardened by all her time in hell. She was brittle. She might just snap.

Creed was dangerous. And even if he was bound to obedience, bound to protect them, he was a monster. Only a monster. Always a monster.

MJ found herself a little nervous and lonely without the two of them there. It was a strange, insane feeling. She'd been on her own in a lot of cities before. She'd survived alone in hell. But after a few days of living with two super-powered people she felt helpless without them.

So she went for a walk.

She stayed in good neighborhoods, and she stopped at a store and picked up a can of mace. She wasn't stupid or suicidal. But she needed to prove that she wasn't afraid. That living in hell hadn't scarred her, left her some quaking, quivering pile of nerves who wouldn't leave her apartment.

She had to face this head-on.

The city stunk of humanity. She still had trouble getting used to people. She'd spent so long living in mortal fear of anything that had guts enough to look her in the eyes—how was she supposed to deal with people, now?

Fortunately, this was New York. Nobody looked her in the eye.

That was a relief.

She found herself heading towards Harry's coffee shop, a haven, and turned away from it. May was too right about that. The complications with Harry's father, the wildness she'd seen in his eyes, the very idea that he could have the kind of power … superhuman strength…

It was all too much to take in.

Something ghosted into her mind then. Harry's funeral.

Harry was alive, though. And the alternate reality—the ghost memories she had of Peter—how could that have…?

This was enough to make her eyes bulge wide open and make her stop walking in the middle of the street. The devil had resurrected Harry. Whatever was happening, he had a part to play in the devil's machinations.

Harry was part of the problem.

She wanted very badly to vomit. Dear, sweet Harry, a part of this problem? Harry, her old friend? Somehow serving the devil, brought back to life?

It was all going to…

She could taste brimstone again.

Every time she thought she was a step ahead of the devil, something else dragged her down. Every time she thought she was winning, they turned out to be losing.

She hurried back to the apartment. Creed and May were there waiting for her, and May looked fairly frantic. She grabbed MJ by the front of her shirt, lifting her up off the ground with a surprising strength.

"You don't leave this apartment alone!" she snarled.

Her arms were shaking, and MJ didn't think it was with the effort of lifting her mother in the air. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. MJ wrapped her arms around her daughter, squeezing her. "I'm all right; this world isn't hell, it's all right," she said soothingly.

May relaxed slowly, lowering her, but not letting go of her grip on the shirt. Creed chose to ignore them, checking the door. He was covered in bruises, and there was blood on his face.

"Did the deed," he muttered.

MJ ignored him. May was looking her right in the eyes, something she didn't do that often. She'd been scared, but even more than that, surprised. Not by MJ's absence. MJ was sure she'd been dreading it, anticipating the day she'd lose her mother again. No—by her response. May had attacked her when she came in the door, attacked her. She hadn't expected a hug in return.

She let go very reluctantly. "It's always dangerous out there," she said rebelliously.

May growled, turning away, her shoulders hunched.

Creed turned back to face her, unzipping his leather jacket. There was blood and bruises everywhere she could see, though the bruises were fast fading and the cuts had already closed up. "He's darker than I remember," he said. "Went for the jugular fast. Went out of control. No jokes any more—that was his thing. Always with the quip. Always so light on his feet. He was out for blood."

"But you let him know…?"

"He was mad. A lot. I almost didn't get away."

May spun around to face Creed. "His webbing isn't part of him; it's a machine!" she snapped.

Creed raised an eyebrow at her. "What the hell?" he asked flatly.

"After he spent all that webbing trying to pin you to the wall he ran out on his left hand, and didn't shoot. I thought his body was replenishing it, but then when you ran he stopped and put a cartridge in—that's why I don't have any webbing powers!"

MJ frowned. This sparked a memory… a memory of wearing those bracelets, of firing webbing from her own wrists. Dear god, what sort of twisted relationship had she been in? She wasn't some kind of superman. She had no powers. Why on earth had he been letting her use his web shooting thingies?

She tried to cover, watching May. "So you think maybe his powers are more like yours?"

May shrugged. "They're still different, but they're not that different. I dunno. It was… he moves like me. I move by instinct, the way that feels right. Like a spider instead of a man. So does he. He crawls like me, jumps like me, hits like me. Watching him fight was… weird."

MJ tried to smile, but couldn't.

Creed snorted. "Yeah, you two are a regular pair of housewives, aint'cha? C'mon, Red. We got things we got to get done."

"What do you mean?"

"The Spider may be a bright and shiny hero losin` his halo, but he's never been stupid. Everybody knows if you go up against him he's got ways of tracking you down. Once you're tangled in him, he hangs on. Tenaciously. Most cities never quite get rid of supervillains, but New York? The Spider, he tends to be a big discouragement. Sure, new blood pops up all the time, but old-timers like me? We know. We got to move, find a new place. Ditch anything he could track us by."

MJ wasn't sure at all what that meant. "How could he track us? By smell?"

May shook her head. "I can't. I don't smell things very well—not the way Creed does."

Creed shrugged. "He's got ESP, you know. Dodges blows he can't see. How would I know how he tracks? He ain't entirely human, that one."

May twisted her neck, staring at the ceiling. "Huh."

"Yeah, I know. Creepifying," said Creed dismissively. "In case you missed it, you and me ain't exactly human either, are we?"

"He's here," said May.

Creed's eyes narrowed. "How could you know that?"

She shrugged. "I sense things. You know I'm like him, don't you? He followed us back here. This isn't right."

MJ thought about it. There was almost no way to avoid Peter drawing the wrong conclusions about this. The truth was too wild. And if May could sense a lie, he probably could too, so there was no point in lying.

She sighed. "Creed, stay here. May, take me to him."

May hesitated. "He's dangerous."

"Creed's dangerous. You're dangerous. We've drawn this masquerade out as far as we can. When he sees me, he'll know something's up. I'm supposed to be dead. Coming back from the dead… that's not something normal people do. That's something… that's…"

"It's something heroes and villains do," growled Creed. He sat down. "Go on, take yer time. Go try to talk the darkness out of him. But if you could do that, the devil wouldn't have sent you here, would he? Heh."

There were stairs that led up to the roof. Nice, normal stairs. MJ's mouth was suddenly dry. How could she possibly explain this so that he would understand? What could she say?

An idea occurred to her.

Once they were on the roof she whistled, loud and sharp, looking around. "We know you're there; come out!" she said.

He dropped out of the sky, landing lightly, as if the fall was nothing. As if he weighed nothing, was just a feather. He was wearing that costume, which left his whole body in sharp relief. Thin, muscular. His eyes were invisible, wide, white orbs, scowling at her.

"I thought you were dead," he said. He didn't sound like Peter Parker. She hadn't remembered this. Was this voice a put on? It was sarcastic and light. It was the Spider talking now.

She tried to smile, but it didn't come. Not even an actress' smile. "Peter."

He didn't flinch, to his credit. "Beg pardon?" he said, after a moment. She'd never told him she knew his secret, not in this reality. Not in the one the devil made.

"I'm not really the MJ you knew," she said cautiously. "I'm not really from this world. I come from a very different world—one where I knew your secrets. One where we were married. One where…" She turned slowly, facing May, who was hanging back. Oddly shy now that they were facing Peter.

He stared at May, his eyes narrowing. "That's… that's at least as odd as seeing you here. But if she were really mine, then…"

May shrugged. "I can do what you can do," she said softly. She moved backwards, to the door they'd come from, and casually started climbing it, her back to the door, sliding up the wall, clinging to it like a spider.

He made an odd noise in his throat.

"I know this must be… we must seem crazy, or like a trap, or… we're here to help. We had to come here when we heard."

He glared at her. "If you're from another reality… where's the Spider-man from my reality?"

She winced. "It's all very complicated. A jumbled mess. I know you aren't really the man I knew—you don't remember me, what we shared…" She left out that she barely remembered it herself.

He crossed his arms very slowly. "Why are you with Creed, then?" he asked coldly.

She winced. "He's not… he's dead here, isn't he? He came with us, he's a little bit… yes, he's a monster, I know, but I have him on a leash, and I needed to…"

"Why have him attack me, then?" His voice was so angry. She didn't remember all this anger within him.

May, who was hanging at the top of the door, slid to the ground. "Because we knew you'd be all suspicious, and thought maybe we could just lie to you, just let you think he was a bad guy, just let you know about those who are coming to kill you. Because they are. They're coming for blood, every one of them. You don't fit in their nice little plans, you aren't… you aren't what they want. And you'd have to kill them to stop them from killing you… and that would be just as bad as if you died, wouldn't it? You're one of the world's greatest heroes, and they want you a villain, one of them. Norman Osborn is going to break you if he can."

He ground his teeth together. "And you expect me to trust you?"

"No," said MJ sadly. "You can't trust us. That's why I tried to lie to you first—and I'm sorry for it, now. I should have known you'd figure it out too soon. I know you can't trust us—it's not smart. People from another world? We probably have some secret agenda we can't let you know about, or are secretly working against you, or any one of a million things that'll just get you killed and make you… look, that stuff Creed said, those enemies who are coming? Don't trust me, but prepare. Do something."

"Do what?" he asked stiffly.

May moved forward, past MJ. "Survive," she said roughly. "Whatever you would have done normally, no matter what… don't do it."

He bolted then. He crouched just a bit, a few inches, and then sprang. She'd seen him on TV before, knew he wasn't normal. And in her memories, she could remember once or twice seeing him defy physics. But both the TV and the other memories were fuzzy, staticy. Neither of them could capture this.

He simply exerted, pushing. But just like that, with incredible speed, he burst up, off the ground, up into the air. There was a faint sound, sharp.

_Thwip_.

Webs flowed from his arms, grabbing the buildings, and the descent arc of his high leap over her head turned into a longer arc, out into the night, crossing a whole city block in a single movement. And at the end of that she could see him firing again, moving faster, gaining speed as he went.

May spun to watch him go, smiling. "I want webs," she said. "Oh, I want webs!"

2.

After that the Spider dropped off the radar. Less web-swinging through town. Less heroics.

MJ worried. She fretted.

She could have found him at any time. Peter Parker had an address. A phone number. He was… teaching? That didn't sound right. What happened to photography?

Still, he was out there. He was public. She could find him at any time. He could come back here.

So why was she cooped up with Creed fretting while May went jumping from building top to building top, exploring this strange world?

She tucked herself in a corner of the room, on the floor. She hadn't been comfortable sleeping in the bed. It was in the middle of the room, exposed. Enemies could come from all sides. She needed to be in a corner, where she could be aware of somebody entering the room before they were aware of her.

Creed sat on the bed and thumbed through a dirty magazine, ignoring her. She knew he was going his own special brand of stir crazy—knew that his hunger for violence was strong. He was chewing at the end of his leash now, and if there was any way to throw off the devil's influence, he would find it.

"These fake Avengers…" she said softly. "What if you were to… to kill them?"

He grinned, reveling in the thought of that bloodshed. "That'd be fun."

"I mean… what are the consequences?"

He squinted at her like she was speaking in a foreign language. "Well, if I do it, your little boy-toy will know it was me, and he'll cotton on you're a tad dark," he admitted.

"I'm not like you!" she protested.

"Aren't you? Who brought up killing some good-guy heroes in order to save him?" demanded the monster, leering at her. "Shades of grey are a good color on you, Red. Downright sexy."

She shuddered. Appealing to Creed wasn't making her happy at all. "You're supposed to be some kind of hotshot assassin, right? Could you… do it so he didn't know it was you?"

"No," growled Creed. "ESP, remember? You sure you want to go down this road of what-if, Red?"

"What do you care?"

"I don't. But you do this, and he could come looking for you. Treat you as a villain. I'm supposed to be protecting you, here. He's tough enough that I might not be able to protect you."

The thought of Peter trying to hurt her was appalling. Unthinkable.

"What do you suggest we do, then?" she asked, unable to hold her despair in.

He grinned at her. "I'm new to this good-guy crap. I'd much rather just kill him and have done with it. That saves the world, doesn't it? Isn't that your number one priority?"

It wasn't. It hadn't been for some time. MJ was astonished to realize this, but it hadn't been what she was trying to do for a while. Saving Peter from death had been so much more important than saving him from himself.

She was playing into the devil's hands. Again. Save Aunt May, doom their marriage. Save Peter. Doom the world.

Lightbulbs went off in her head.

"May," she breathed out very slowly.

"Not due back for another hour. Want me to check the roof?" asked Creed, sure she meant her daughter.

She grinned at him. "Hold down the fort. Let her know where I am. I've got to go track down the one person who can make Peter see sense any day of the week."


	8. Chapter 8

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

It was strange, going back to Queens. MJ's roots were here.

She hated her roots with a passion.

Her father had been abusive and unsupportive. Her mother had ignored it for years. Her entire family life was like a terrible joke.

And yet, she was the one who had gone to hell. While they stayed in Queens.

Unfair.

Fortunately, she wasn't going to see any of her family today. Today, she was going back to the house next door, to the house where the superhero next door had always lived. To Peter's house.

To see May Parker.

Not finding her there was a surprise. This was worse than going looking for Harry and finding him missing. She stared for a while at the name on the house, wondering just how this had happened. Was the entire world turned upside down? Why would the dear, sweet little old lady move from here? Where would she go?

Was this the devil's hand? Moving people around—getting them out of MJ's reach? Keeping them distant from her, where they couldn't help?

MJ headed to the local library. Maybe she could still find May. The devil had spoken of her health failing… that had to mean something.

2.

Married?

MJ stared at the newspaper article with deep, deep suspicion.

May had gotten re-married? After all these years? And to a Jameson?

MJ's memories were still a hodge-podge of the first and second timelines, of reality and unreality, of things that never happened, ghosts messing up her perception of this world. But she was pretty sure than in any world men named Jameson were bad news, enemies of the Spider-man, and definitely not marriage material.

She skimmed through the paper quickly. To her surprise and relief, it wasn't the same man she was remembering, although they were apparently related. It was his father? Strange.

There was no address, but now she had an idea of where May was… on her honeymoon. In Paris.

There was definitely a hint of the devil's hand here. Taking May away just when MJ needed her most? Taking May away from Peter when he'd sacrificed so much to bring her back to life?

MJ headed back to the safehouse, massaging her aching temples.

3.

She wasn't aware he was following her until he fell in step with her. Without the mask he looked young, clean-cut and fresh-faced. Just a kid. A boy playing at heroics. He didn't quite look at her, keeping an eye on the street.

"Hello, Peter," she said, trying to keep her voice level.

"I was just wondering what you were doing going to my old house," he said, with no preamble.

"I was hoping to talk to May," she said. It was a little torturous having to tell him the truth, but if he was like May and could hear a lie…

He frowned, still not quite looking at her. His jaw was tight, tense. She could remember this. He'd always acted as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. She remembered the days before she knew, the days when she'd thought he was over-serious. After finding out the truth about how he spent his nights, about what he was, she'd understood. How could a man who took the whole city under his wing be anything but tense?

"And what did you want to talk about?" he asked.

"Well, …about you, of course."

He laughed. It wasn't the pleasant laugh she remembered. There was an edge to it. Darkness. "Is that a threat?" he asked.

She stopped walking. "What? Peter, of course not! I just meant… I know you kept the secret from her for a long time! I wasn't going to spill the beans just like that!"

He frowned. "You mean I told her in this other world?"

She nodded. "Of course, Peter. You had to. There was… there were… it was…" She didn't have a solid grasp on what had happened. She knew he had been forced to tell his aunt, after all these years. She knew it had been hard. She couldn't for the life of her remember why it had been so hard.

He smirked. "Yeah, really?" It was acid and sarcastic. She hunched her shoulders inward slightly, staring at him.

"You're different," she said flatly. He rolled his eyes as if this was obvious. "I'm not sure I like you any more, Peter Parker."

"You never did like me," he pointed out. "You liked somebody else who happened to share my face. Don't confuse me with him just because we look alike. I'm not the man you left behind in your alternate reality."

His tone was angering her, and she couldn't hold in the outburst any longer. "Stop that," she said. "You have no idea why I did it—why I came here."

"You won't tell me."

"Do you really want the whole story? Do you?"

He looked around. "We're making a scene," he muttered.

"Then let's go somewhere we can be alone," she said, turning. "Where are you living these days?"

4.

His apartment was ratty and run-down. It looked suspiciously like the rat-hole Creed had found for them to hide away in.

MJ knew she shouldn't laugh. She knew he'd take it poorly. She covered her mouth and bit down on her knuckle to try to hold it in. She watched him turn to the fridge and rifle through it. Finding nothing he returned with a scowl, and waved her over to the only chair the apartment had.

"This is the part where you try to make me trust you," he said.

She shook her head. "No; it's the part where I explain where I'm from. If I wanted to make you trust me I'd lie to you… try to convince you it's all so much simpler than this. You… do you remember making a deal with the devil, Peter?"

He stiffened. "Mephisto? No. Of course not."

"You did." She took a deep breath. "No, don't bother denying it. He took away our memory of the deal as well. When I said an alternate reality it was only mostly true. I hardly remember it. But I was married to you, and we made a deal with the devil to save Aunt May."

He shuddered. "Don't call her that."

"I've called her that most of my adult life," she replied. Which was half true. "I don't… I don't know a lot of what happened, or what the devil's plans were, but I know that we… we are pawns in some game of his, some grand game where he's moving pieces… moving us around… using us… he… oh, Peter!"

But Peter had heard enough, and his jaw was set. "I have never entered into any deal with the devil," he said stubbornly. "I think I'd remember something like that." He moved closer to her. "I've had more than enough trouble with people showing up and wearing my face recently. Now you show up, masquerading as a dead friend… who are you, really?"

MJ stared at him. "Peter…"

He shook his head, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to her feet. His grip was like being pinned under a car, like a bull hitting her. His grip was powerful. It was inhuman.

"I'm not playing your game any longer," he said, and his voice was full of quiet fury. "Tell me what your game is."

He flinched back, away from her, and a split second later the window exploded. MJ threw her hands up, shielding her face.

May was there, between her and Peter, as if she'd been there all along. "You don't touch her!" spat the tiny teenaged girl, crouching slightly, her hands curled into fists.

Peter swung a fist at her, so fast MJ barely registered it as a blur. She tried to yell, to stop them, but before she could find the words they were committed, fighting.

Their fight was furiously fast. Both of them danced with amazing speed and agility, never quite managing to land a hand on the other. Peter might have been stronger, but May was faster. More agile. She rolled around every blow, making her own count with stunning precision.

She began landing blows on him. First one, tentatively, then another. Still managing to stay ahead of his blows, to dodge everything he threw at her.

Then he managed to land a single blow, a backhand across her face. The impact picked her up off her feet, smashing her back into the wall. MJ jumped forward, between them, as he started stalking towards May. "Don't touch her!" she shrieked, trying to grab him. He avoided her hands easily, shoving her back towards the wall blindly.

Then Creed smashed his way through the door. He was carrying a gun, a big, blocky black thing. Without a word he aimed it at Peter.

Peter kicked out at the floor, flying up to the ceiling. When he touched it he changed angle, although he had no purchase at all, flying out towards the gaping window May had smashed through. Creed fired once, the bellowing report of his gun deafening MJ. The wall exploded, but Peter was gone.

"He'll be back," said Creed. "We got to beat feet. What possessed you to beard him in his den?"

MJ shook her head. She could barely understand Creed, her ears still ringing with the gunfire. "May?" she called quietly.

Strong hands picked her up, dusting her off. "Come on," said May. She looked unhurt, even though MJ had seen her fly through the air, slamming into the wall. Unfazed.

MJ was still sore from his iron grip on her upper arm, still dazed from the force of his quick shove that had knocked her into the wall. Still reeling from the fight, from the lightning quick pace of it.

She just stared at her daughter, amazed.

5.

It was more than she could take.

MJ let them lead her to their new apartment, an even dirtier rat-hole, and hunkered down in a corner, staring at her hands.

May curled up against her side in an uncharacteristic show of solidarity and emotion. MJ wrapped an arm around the teen's shoulders, holding her tightly.

Creed went to the table and checked his gun. "I don't normally use guns, ya know," he said, sounding grumpy. "It's cold and impersonal. I like the hands-on approach. But they told me this thing would drop him—that it was so fast he couldn't possibly dodge it. But he did, anyway."

MJ ignored him. Peter wasn't wrong to attack them, either. They were the devil's tools. They were definitely not the good guys.

Now Peter was sure they were the bad guys. He wouldn't listen to them. He wouldn't trust them. And he would hunt them down while they were here?

"Is this what it's like being the bad guy?" she whispered, looking down at May, then up to Creed. "Knowing he's coming, knowing he won't stop, won't rest?"

"There's a reason the only criminals who hang out here in New York are meat-heads," replied Creed. "Guys like me—the real pros—people like Bullseye, Deadpool, the guys who know… we try to make trips here in and out. He don't scare you like some of them… the Punisher, he kills bad guys. People know there are lines the Spider won't cross. He's a white hat. Doesn't kill. But if you're here too long, he'll find you, he'll take you down. He moves like nobody else. He hunts like nobody else. If he were a bad guy, he'd be one of the greats. He'd kill people like a shadow, and who could catch him? As a good guy? He's… he ain't big enough to really keep the city safe, you know? Can't be everywhere, can't do everything. But he's not human, and he scares the little fish, and he makes the big fish cautious. Gang wars go down, and people know he's in it."

MJ shuddered. He was in everything. He was everywhere. How could they protect him, when he was so visible, so responsible? When the whole city was his to protect?

She felt cold all over, except for the too-warm teenager cuddled into her side.

She pressed a palm against May's forehead slowly. "Sweetie, are you feeling warm?" she asked carefully.

Creed shook his head. "She ain't sick, if that's what ya mean. She is runnin` hot… it's a metabolism thing. The whole not-human thing. Hungrier than a human, faster than a human, runs hotter… nice in the winter, a real bitch in the summer."

MJ frowned at him. "You're an expert in this, huh?"

He waved a hand at his garb. "Ya think I wear the tank top cuz I look good in it? I mean, I do, but still… I know from not being human, ya know?"

May smiled at MJ. "I think I could beat him. He's fast, and he's strong, but if you weren't there to make me worry, and Creed wasn't there to outnumber him, I think I could take him. Sure, he's got more experience, and he's got webs, and he's stronger, but I think I could take him."

It sounded arrogant. It sounded boastful. But it made MJ smile, and she hugged May fiercely. "I hope you don't have to," she said. "He's a good man. He's just lost his way."

She had no idea how to get him back on track, though.

6.

Now she didn't leave without May by her side. Before she hadn't been afraid, and she still wasn't truly afraid. Peter wouldn't hurt her, after all. But he would split them up if he could.

May said that whenever they left he followed them, though MJ never saw him. But she trusted May's sixth sense.

They took walks. Since MJ wasn't sure what to do about Peter, besides having Creed go after the Avengers if they came to town, she tried to teach May a little bit of normality. She took her shopping for clothes, they went around town seeing the sights.

MJ went through the legal formalities of being declared legally alive again. She wasn't sure how long that would last… a side effect of dealing with the devil, no doubt. But she wanted to believe she'd live through this.

It was harder than she had expected. And there were all kinds of questions about the doctors who'd declared her dead, and her funeral. She explained it all away with a hand-wave about somebody who looked like her and had been in a terrible accident, while she'd been having a nervous breakdown in some faraway country cottage.

They didn't bother trying to get May a real identity. Instead Creed used his contacts, such as they were, to fake papers for her.

Since they couldn't very well just call her May Parker they called her May Smith. It was enough for her to continue living her, to establish an identity and a normal life, if they managed to live through whatever came next.

MJ knew that whatever came next would be worse.

7.

Then the day came.

Creed woke her up in the early hours of the morning. "Frail, we got trouble," he said. He had a tiny radio, and he turned it up.

The voice, hissing with static, was talking about the Avengers descending from the sky, battling the elusive Spider-man in Central Park.

"Dear God," she whispered.

May pulled a package out from under the bed. "I made this," she said defensively. "I got the idea at the store… they had a Halloween costume there. Made to look like him. I thought… I mean, I thought…"

"You made a costume?" asked Creed, laughing.

"Get your weapons together. We need to get down there and take care of this," said MJ.

May shook her head. "No, mom. You stay here. Creed and I will take care of this."

MJ was horrified by the idea. "You two… by yourselves? I need to…"

"You got guts," said Creed. "Now try to act like you got sense, too. This is powers. Capes. Big guns. They got their Iron Patriot and their god of war, all the good stuff. You get killed, I got a feeling it's game over for us. Back to hell. Don't know about you, but I don't want to go back there. Place of eternal torment where I never get to kill, never get to feel even a little bit of…? No. I'm not goin` back to hell. You stay here. Keep your head down. We'll deal with this."

8.

There was nothing in the world harder than sitting there, listening to the frantic voice of the news broadcaster trying to keep up with what was going on. Waiting to hear what would happen.

MJ sat there, staring at the wall. Just listening.

"They're shooting at him, they're shooting at Spider-man… my god, all the guns, how is he…? No, he's still alive! He's outrunning them—my god! My god! He's got the god of war, he's beating the god of war, one on one! He's taking him down!"

She knew what this meant. If he killed a hero, this would be the moment that Mephisto wanted. Peter would go dark, and there'd be no turning back. The other heroes, the real ones, would come out. They'd come for Peter, and he'd kill them, and in his wake a new age of darkness would spread.

And if he died, it would be just as bad. One of the world's purest heroes would fall. One of the last ones who refused to kill, who refused to compromise. And the world would turn darker.

Peter surely thought he was in a place where he must kill or be killed. And if he did either, the world as they knew it would be finished. Darkness would reign.

And MJ knew the devil wanted her to push him over the edge, make him that killer. It would be so easy to save him that way, by killing for him. That was why she had Creed. But if she did that—if she made him into Creed's ally—then he was one step closer to being a hero that killed, a dark hero.

And the world would tumble into Mephisto's hands.

"What's this?" The news man was losing his composure. "A second Spider-man? No, it's not—it's a girl! Spider-girl! She's attacking—helping him? No, she just hit him… No, she just clocked the god of war! I repeat, Ares, the god of war, was just knocked out by a girl! The Iron Patriot is back on his feet—my god! The spiders are working together, and they are tearing this team apart! Hawkeye is down—the Sentry is moving in! If anybody can stop them, it's the Sentry! He's moving fast—they are outrunning the Sentry! Ladies and gentlemen, this is insane! I can't—somebody is shooting. Where is that coming from? I can't see it. They've taken down the Iron Patriot again!"

MJ had told May the stakes, what to avoid. That they couldn't kill. She'd drummed it into Creed, but she knew that he truly served the devil, not her. She'd told May that, too. But they needed the extra firepower right now. What could they do with just May?

Still, it sounded like they had saved Peter without killing any heroes. That was important.

That was the only way to win.

"My god—now Spider-man is turning on the Spider-girl—she's down! He's picking her up—my god! He's going to kill her!"

MJ stopped breathing.


	9. Chapter 9

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this… Also, although I've borrowed the Dark Avengers, I don't want to involve them or the New Avengers too much. This is first and foremost completely AU, and secondly, MJ's story.

1.

MJ fought her way through the milling crowd, through the bodies pressing in on all sides. The whole park was swarming with bystanders hoping to catch a glimpse of the carnage, hoping to see what happened here.

Everybody was long gone. There was no sign of the heroes of the piece, or the villains disguised as heroes. No sign of May, no sign of Creed, no sign of Peter.

Her chest felt constricted. She wasn't even sure what she was hoping to accomplish here, what she could do.

She wandered around, searching for clues. Searching for Peter, for May. Even for the treacherous monster she relied on.

She found Creed, which was the worst oddity of all. Or perhaps he found her. At any rate, he fell into step beside her, walking with her. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket, his hair tucked back carefully behind his ears. He was alert, sniffing the air.

"They were all fakes," he said. "If they'd been the real thing they woulda torn him up. But they were all fakes. Except that God of War… he was some tough. But yer puny boy in blue was going to kill that Iron Patriot… had him right where he wanted him. Norman Osborn, his fancy high-tech armor beat all to hell. May was brilliant… faster than him. Fought him and them, really, so fast most people couldn't even see what she was doing. She dropped the fake Hawkeye, an` that's no mean feat, frail. I smelled him; that's Bullseye. He's probably one of the scariest men I ever met ain't got no real superpowers. Deadly, sadistic, and she dropped him flat. He ain't no amateur, neither. He's got moves. Real moves."

"Where are they now?" she whispered.

"She got tagged real bad. He carried her off. I can track them by scent, you see. Okay?"

2.

They tracked Peter across the city, heading further and further from the scene of the battle. Sabretooth was moving slow, citing a difficulty in tracking a man who swung across rooftops. MJ had a very low tolerance for excuses just now, but managed not to yell at him.

They were right in a crowded section of town when he stopped walking, sniffing the air. "Ah, crap," he muttered.

"What?"

"Their fake Wolverine is right on our tail. Come on, follow me." He began running, sprinting for the subways.

"How fake is she?" yelled MJ.

There was some kind of funny smell in the air. Something not rancid or unpleasant, just strange. It smelled like Peter Parker, for some reason. It smelled like home, like something right. She stopped running, staring after Creed, who doubled back.

A good-looking man with the worst hair-cut she'd seen since the eighties strolled casually up the street. He was wearing a brown blazer, but his pants and shirt were clearly a costume.

"Well, hello," he said. There was just a hint of foreign accent in his voice, although it was hard to pick out. It was a cultured, smooth voice, and it was captivating. MJ couldn't look away from him.

"Hi," she said breathlessly.

He quirked one eyebrow lazily. "And what is a fine lady like you doing walking arm in arm with a killer like him?" he asked.

She stared. "Who are you?"

"Daken," he said, offering her his hand.

Creed returned, grabbing her collar and pulling her back, away from the man in front of her. "Stop using yer pheronomes to muddy up her mind—or I'll rip your head off!"

His smile was lazy and sultry. "Do you think you could, old man? Father never could take me, one on one. And I know you might have taken him, but I could…" He trailed off slowly, his eyes clouding over. "Do you remember me?"

"Huh?" Sabretooth shook his head. "Should I?"

Daken frowned. "You don't even smell right. We worked together, in the past. For Romulus. What…? Something…?"

Creed lashed out, knocking down the other man. He took off running, dragging MJ along.

As they got further and further from the other man MJ could feel her heart slowing down. His presence had been intoxicating. His appearance marvelous. How had he managed that? What wizardry had he used to make her lust after him?

Sabretooth had mentioned pheromones. "How'd you know about the pheromones?" she asked, when he stopped running.

"I started smelling somebody's been long-dead. His pheromones don't have a smell, really, but they make you smell an` hear things… make you _like_ `im. That's all."

"Oh… you met him before?"

Creed shook his head. "Not as I can remember, but my memory's been torn up a couple times. Screwed with. I lost the scent, back there, scrapin` with him. Come on; let's go see if he's still at that apartment he took ya to."

3.

He wasn't.

The ramshackle apartment had been uninhabited for a long time. He must have abandoned it after they had all been there, knowing that he couldn't really expect them to stay away.

It made sense. Why stay where they could find them, if they were the bad guys?

MJ didn't feel like the bad guy.

She moved to the window, staring out at the street. "But he didn't hurt her, did he? The news…"

"It was fast, but it wasn't him. It was the Sentry. That one… he's a god, not a man. And he just punched her once, and she was down. One time she failed to dodge him. Just one time. And he was pulling his punches, out there… thought he was going crazy. Thought he was… yeah."

MJ frowned. What was this? If it had been anybody else she would have thought they were babbling. Creed never offered this much, not without prompting. This flighty need to keep talking….

She frowned at him, squinting, and he sped up. "Maybe we can find them some other way. Criss-cross back to the scene, see if I can pick up the scent again. We ought to move; the fake Wolverine can probably track me."

"He thought you'd recognize him," she said quietly.

He blinked a few times, trying to process this. Trying to cover, to think of a good lie. "Told you, it's probably all to do with those that pull my strings…"

But there was a very tentative note to his voice. She smirked at him, putting a few pieces together in her head. "Or maybe your time in hell was a big change, right? Maybe the change between this timeline and the other confused you?"

He looked away, but she knew he was going to do that. He needed to think, to regroup. But she'd watched a million and one cop shows. He looked away and began to think. He was lying. It was plainly written on his face.

She wasn't surprised at all, which surprised her. When had she become so cynical?

"Don't give me a pretty lie," she said, trying to make her voice as flat and monotone as possible. When you stripped inflection out of your words the other person heard what they were afraid to hear. They projected. It was one of those acting tricks she'd picked up on and over-used terribly… but it worked, again. He panicked.

Of course, in this case, panic meant that he chuckled. Amused. Grim. "Well. I did warn him that things would be a little more complex than just sending me out here to watch you."

A shift in vocabulary. In persona. She knew what that meant without even having to think about it. "Were you ever really Creed?" she asked.

He shifted back into his more natural form, horns appearing. "Of course not. Use one of our imprisoned, chained souls to track souls in hell? That would be insanity itself. But we really needed you to think you had an ally here… somebody you could trust."

"And you could manipulate me the whole time. I needed to be there! For that big fight. That's why you kept me away from it! Because May kept him from killing the heroes, but now he has May, and you were leading me away from him—weren't you? You had zero intention of ever letting me find the two of them."

The demon grimaced. "Really, it's your own fault. Thinking you could make a deal with the devil! Oh, you did a good job of thinking, but you didn't carry it out to the conclusion. It's dangerous to think that you are ever even a little bit in control when you deal with that one. Even a little bit!"

He wasn't angry she found him out. That meant he wasn't lying now; he'd done what he came here to do. By putting May in Peter's hands they'd sealed the future that the devil wanted. She wasn't sure of the how or the why, but she knew she was expendable now, and she was here in his hands. This demon.

She squeezed her eyes shut. "I was stupid."

"Yeah, well. Humans always get into deals with the devil for one reason; they think they can beat him. Can slip away with what they want and never pay the price. Thing is… he always gets what he wants in the end. Always!"

MJ opened her eyes, smiling. "Yeah, well. Risks, rewards, all that. Is this where you drag me back to hell kicking and screaming?"

He held one hand up, displaying sharp claws. "I think you may have outlived your usefulness, yes. Farewell, small annoying human. You were much smarter than I expected."

The civility of the compliment attached to the death threat almost made her laugh. But instead of laughing she took a deep breath. "Demon, hellspawn, creature of darkness…. I have been expecting you, you know. Not as Creed…" She looked up, meeting his eyes, and clenching her hands into fists. "But I have been expecting you."

She'd been preparing for this moment, the moment when the devil sent all his demons after her. And she'd known that she couldn't trust Creed—that he was the devil's eyes and ears in this place. Even if she hadn't understood that he was a fake, a demon pretending to be a human monster she could control.

There were a few different holy symbols that she'd investigated. How did you find out which ones worked on demons? A quick internet search had shown her equal parts garbage and speculation. Who had fought a demon? Who would talk about it? Nobody.

But there had been some helpful hints from mythology.

She tore the bracelet off her wrist, tossing it at him. It struck him in the face, and where it hit he burst into flames. Not surprising; she'd entwined holy symbols from every religion she could find into it, prayed over it, soaked it in holy water, had a priest bless it… everything she could think of to sanctify the bracelet.

The thing roared, an awful scream with deadly intent. MJ kept backing up, drawing the knives she'd also soaked in holy water and etched with crosses and other symbols supposed to have power.

"Come on," she whispered. "Come and get me."

It was no replacement for the weapon she'd had to leave in hell, the one that Ben Parker had given her. It was barely even a shadow of that weapon. But it was a weapon, in her hands. It was something solid, something she could use.

She had missed that. She had been longing for that. It had been an effective weapon against the monsters, something that had kept her safe from them, even if that had been mostly the devil lulling her into a false sense of security.

Now she lunged, while the demon was still blinded by the flames in his face, slashing him across the arm. It didn't cut through his flesh the way the sword had. It didn't cleave him easily. His skin was tough, and the knife was insufficient, even with the holy water. It left a shallow cut across his arm.

But the wound burst into flames, and his howl grew more high-pitched.

It could hurt him. Maybe it wouldn't take his head off in one blow, but it could hurt him. She could hurt him.

She could work with that.

She charged, swinging both arms in a single arc, aiming for its torso. The demon stumbled back, lashing out blindly.

The blow caught her across the temple, and then the ceiling was spinning in front of her and her back seemed to be on first. The demon was gone, but she could hear him howling and why was she on the floor?

Oh, right. He hit her.

She tried to sit up, looking around for the knives she'd been holding. There was pain, and blood was in her eyes, but the demon was still here somewhere; she pushed through the pain, ignoring it.

She had to stay alive. For Peter. For May.

One knife had fallen beside her. She scooped it up, holding it in as good a grip as she knew how. She was painfully aware that it was an amateur grip, that she really had no idea how to fight with knives.

She had to try.

He had staggered to the window, and was using the drapes to put out the flames on his head. His howling was muffled now. She wished she had been more ready than this. She had a bottle of holy water, back at the place they'd been staying. She hadn't thought to grab it before coming out here.

She charged, stabbing at his back. He was still big, a broad target, and the knife slid into him with a sickening crunching noise. His howling intensified, and he jerked, trying to get away from her.

She stabbed him until he stopped howling, and then some more until he stopped moving altogether.

4.

She didn't dare go back to the hideout the demon had selected for them. She headed back across town, trying to keep her head down. She tied her hair back and put on a baseball cap, which also hid the worst of the bruises from where the creature had hit her.

May was gone. Peter was gone. Her only ally had been a demon all along. And now she was walking the streets of New York alone and homeless with no idea where to go.

She knew that it was a mistake. She knew the devil was boxing her in. But she had only one safe haven left.

She went to Harry.

As bad decisions went, this had to be one of the worst. She knew his whole life was part of the devil's plans. That he might be just another demon in disguise, like the one masquerading as Creed.

She had no choice, though.

There were people in his coffee shop, but when he saw her he leaned over to the girl at the register, murmuring to her. "Sorry, folks, I have to run an errand," he said, loudly. "I'll be right back."

He took MJ to the back room where he'd been sleeping. "Are you okay, MJ?" he asked, looking at her with concern.

"Things are bad, Harry. Really bad." She was sweating. She knew she shouldn't talk to him. "Did you see… did you see your dad went after Spider-man?"

A very calculating look appeared in his eyes. "And why exactly is that very bad? Nobody's terribly fond of the big blue bug, MJ…"

"He's _Peter!"_

Harry didn't say anything, watching her with an expression that was completely empty. Waiting.

She took a deep breath. "I know this is big, but it's important… he's in trouble, and he's your friend…"

"I know."

She stopped talking, closing her mouth and trying to remember what Harry had known. Had he ever been a villain, in the other world? She thought so. Maybe. Following in his dad's footsteps? Following him? Becoming some kind of monster?

She wasn't sure. But May had said he had power. She could sense it around him.

"May… the little girl… our little girl… she knew you had power. She could sense it. There's… there's big stuff happening, Harry, and I need your help so bad. I know… I know… your dad wants you to be like him, right? And you and Peter fought… and you knew Spider-man… your dad… you knew they were enemies. And you tried not to pick sides, right? Family versus friends… but my daughter… May…"

She was babbling. She couldn't make it all fit together, couldn't make the words make sense.

She stopped, and just stared at him, begging him. Imploring him. Trying to ask him the things she couldn't say.

He touched a finger to the side of his nose, grinning wickedly. "We like to think we're invincible, don't we, when the truth is that we're flawed! Human. My dad believes that if he just gets enough power, enough control, he can master everybody else the way he could never master himself. Peter thinks if he just works hard enough he can keep from losing anybody else. Now you're playing the game? What do you want?"

"Just my daughter, safe," she said softly. "The… the devil's playing for the world, but I don't care about the world. The one thing I care about more than anything else is May. I'm not playing his games. I don't care. I need your help, because… because you have power, and I don't. Because you're strong. And I need that strength."

His grin got a little ugly. "Really? You need that strength? How bad? Who would you be willing to kill for it?"

She just stared at him for a long minute, feeling like she didn't know him, and never had. But this ugliness had to have been within him all along. This turmoil. "What do you mean?"

He flexed, showing off his bicep. "You think I'm strong? I dosed up on my dad's serum once, maybe twice. I have a whole case of it in the cellar that I stole from him… the stuff that made him strong enough to fight Spider-man. Strong enough to be a god. You want to be strong, like them? You want to play at being a super-hero? I can make you one of them."

She stared at him. "And your dad's insane," she said flatly.

He nodded. "And the serum has always—always!—had that effect on me, too." He lowered his arm, a bit sheepishly. "I made his serum better, you know. Only thing is…" He shook his head, still smiling. "If I had ever taken the serum, it would have killed me. Making it stronger made it more lethal. Instead of just a little madness, it would have been… it would have been the end. Do you see? I almost did. I wanted revenge on Peter for my father's death. I was inches. But there was this little voice that stopped… a little voice that told me I could get the revenge I always wanted if I just waited. Just waited. You know he killed my father, don't you?"

Her blood ran cold. "Harry, your dad's alive."

"I know that! Alive and leading the Avengers… but I thought…" He looked so confused. "I was going to kill him for killing my dad. But my dad was alive all along. Some kind of healing factor in the formula…" He stepped back, away from her. "MJ… I've been taking pills a long time. Not… I mean… Not like in college, not that bad… but for… anti-psychotics. The goblin serum didn't do this. It made me… it made me more of what I already was. I could take more serum. Could become… the goblin… I have a costume, a glider, all that stuff. Stashed away. But I would become more of what I was. I would go nuts. You can't ask this of me, MJ. You can't destroy me."

In the end, it was a surprisingly easy decision. The devil had sent her Harry, but it was clear that if she used him, if she made him help her, that she would destroy him and make him into a monster.

But she still needed a goblin.

"I can't," she said, regretting it. "Harry… I need to save May."

He nodded. "If you go down this road, there's no turning back."

"I know."

He closed his eyes, tilting his head. "MJ… I don't ever want to… you're…"

"Harry… Harry, just give me the serum." Her heart was pounding in her ears. "Give me the serum, the glider, the costume. All of it. And then… then try to find Peter. Try to warn him."

Because if the serum did make her crazy, Peter was the only one who could stop her.

Was this playing into the devil's hands again? Maybe. Maybe this was the reason he'd brought Harry back to life, to give her this one weapon that would turn on her. But she needed a weapon, some way to try to save her daughter.

And she was willing to face madness to try to save May.


	10. Chapter 10

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

She was _flying._

It was the most terrifying feeling in the world. The little board under her feet was shaking and rattling, leaving a cloud of black fumes behind her. She was roaring along through the air faster than a car, easily seventy or eighty miles an hour.

She was skimming over the tops of the buildings, buzzing every camera she saw. Trying to catch somebody's attention. Anybody. She didn't care if the Avengers came back; they'd probably have some way to track Peter. They'd do, for her purposes. She didn't care if it was May and Peter. Or even the devil. She still had the knives, after all.

She couldn't tell if the stupid serum was affecting her at all. Was she light-headed? Or was that a normal sensation, like vertigo? Were her hands shaking?

It didn't help that her teeth were chattering. Even in the protective costume this was **cold**! The wind whipped past her hard, cutting right through the armor. Cutting through the silly green and purple costume.

This might have been the stupidest thing she did since coming back from hell. Or maybe the smartest. Right now those polar opposites seemed just as likely.

Several military helicopters had spotted her, flanked her, and then given up pursuit after she demonstrated how much better than them she was at flying between buildings, under bridges, and maneuvering quickly.

Those fast maneuvers were _hard._ You had to be very careful not to clip anything—there was no protection at all. You were riding a rocket. If you pulled wrong you could die here.

She managed a barrel roll, leaning forward into it. Her calves were already burning from this exertion. It was harder than running, but a million times faster. This was insanity.

Pure, sheer insanity.

She wished it would end soon. She hoped it could end soon. She had no way to tell when she would find Peter—no way to tell what would happen.

Then she felt a little twinge, at the base of her skull. A feeling of impending doom, perhaps. Spiders scrabbling through her brain.

She hoped it was some kind of heightened sense and not insanity setting in, and she slowed the glider, circling back.

Peter was there, swinging from building to building. Following her as fast as he could.

For just a second it was a dance of some macabre sort, his body flinging through the air, unguided, uncontrolled. The powerful jet under her feet throbbed and pulsed, letting her know that she could do this so much better than he could; that she had power.

She slowed down to a hover, leaning back and letting the rocket hold her in place. Trying to look like she wasn't exhausted from the effort. Trying to look as cool as he looked, as world-weary and snarky.

It was something about the mask. There was no humanity in those flat eyes, no life. He jumped up, onto a rooftop, then up from there. Each leap was powerful, inhuman. More spider than man.

He ended up on an antenna, sticking up. The big kind that had a flashing light at the top, to warn planes it was there. He perched on, lowering himself into a crouch, and she lowered herself down so that she could be close enough to hear him over the growl of the glider.

When he spoke, his voice was nothing like Peter. It was the beast in front of her, just a faceless demon. "So, who're you?" he asked. His voice was terribly cold. "I just handed the original Gobby his teeth, and you aren't him at all… You're a little too much woman to be Harry…"

"It's me, Peter," she said, taking the hideous mask off. The one that clung to her face and made her mouth look huge. The mask that made her look like a goblin in so many ways.

He just stared at her. "You're a Goblin, now?" he asked, floored by this.

"I needed to find you. I needed to find May. Where is she."

"Back at my place. Resting." His voice was a tad too hard.

"Please take me to her, Peter."

He tilted his head to one side. "Take you to her? She's just a little girl and you're twisting her all around with lies about the devil and letting her associate with baddies like Sabretooth. And he's worse than most of the ones I fight. He's a sadistic animal who enjoys his kills. I'm not letting you take her back to that."

She wasn't sure how he would take the news that she had killed the fake Sabretooth. She wasn't even sure if he would believe her, or if he would think she was making it up to get May back.

She swallowed. "Peter, she went out there to save you… doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"I noticed she was there, and you weren't, even though you have an nice goblin glider of your own that I'm sure would have been really handy in that fight with all those fliers against us," he said coldly.

Again, she knew that the truth wouldn't possibly help. She leaned away from him, letting the glider slide lower, so she was on eye level with him. "Peter… she's my daughter."

He laughed harshly. "If you really want what's best for her, then you'll fly away now. She's my daughter too."

But he was at least halfway to evil. At least. He'd been going to kill the admittedly evil Norman Osborn; he was at least halfway into a rage right now, getting ready to hit her.

She took a deep breath. "No, Peter. Because you look at me and see how evil I am, what I've become… but I look at you and see the man who nearly killed Norman Osborn. I see the man who still could snap and destroy this whole world. You think you're underappreciated, don't you? You've put a lot of evil down, in your time. You've stood in the breach. But the big heroes, they ignore you. You're small potatoes. No Tony Stark, no… no Captain America. Just a guy who slings web through New York. But that's not the sum of you, and we both know it. The first time you met the Avengers, didn't a robotic double of you beat them all? Can't you see that this is what your whole life has been about? Every single event in your life has been harder than the flimsy reasons your enemies go bad. Every single thing that happens has been a trap laid for you by a cunning enemy. An evil Spider-man… you would be a more competent villain than any villain you ever faced. Nobody could stop you. Could they?"

In that mask there was no way for her to see his face, to see how he was taking this. No way to see if she was getting through. But she had to keep trying. She continued undaunted.

"Peter, look at yourself! Living alone, in hiding, in fear. Coming closer and closer to the edge. You've stopped joking, stopped laughing. You're brutal. The criminals in this city already feared you… now they live in terror. You are in so many ways the heart of this city, all that's good in it. Don't throw that away! Don't let them make you into a villain, Peter. Not after all the good you've done!"

Those white, flat eyes stared at her. And she knew then that he wasn't going to give her May, that he was dead-set against her. And she knew that if she turned on him it would only help the devil's plans, would only accelerate him on his course.

But she couldn't let him keep May.

So she let the devil win, reaching out to grab him, thinking to fly him up, to force him to listen to her. But he was moving before her hand even twitched, and as she reached for him he'd moved, quicker than lightning.

Then something hit her in the stomach, so hard that she fell backwards, tumbling, the breath knocked out of her. If she weren't strapped into the glider she would have lost it; as it was the rocket blasted her down, towards the street, and she had try to fly it while pain screamed in her stomach.

She managed to roll, throwing her weight into it to try and get it back to flying upwards. It bucked, hard, and she felt something snap in one knee. She ignored the pain, pulling the mask back on as wind whipped past her face so hard it began to go numb.

And then he was slamming into her, feet-first, swinging out of nowhere, somehow calculating the exact trajectory he needed to interrupt her recovery, to slam into her and knock her out of the sky again.

This time the impact slammed her into the side of a building, a bone-cracking impact that would have killed her twenty minutes ago.

This wasn't twenty minutes ago. Harry's serum filled her, made her strong. Made her superhuman. The blood inside her flowed green now, blood that was twisted and wrong, terrible. Blood that should never have flowed inside of her.

She knew fighting him was going to lose him. That the devil was winning.

But right now she had only one priority. This Peter wasn't like the half-remembered memories of the man she'd married. This Peter wasn't like those memories, and saving him was only a secondary goal.

May, little fragile May, who had lived in hell for so long, was the one that MJ had to protect.

She turned and blasted away from the building, at him. She hadn't bothered familiarizing herself with the weapons Harry had given her. She didn't know how to use them, wasn't familiar with their weight. She was barely competent to fly this thing.

She turned back on weapons she was used to.

The blades came out fast, one in each hand. He wasn't vulnerable to the holy water, or the etched crosses, or anything else on them, but they were still knives.

As he swung, a long arc, she simply followed. In the air she had more maneuverability. Once he touched something he was fast, but out on that web-line, swinging, he couldn't change directions.

In the middle of his arc she rammed into him, cutting him across his back. She didn't aim for his neck—this was still Peter, after all. But she didn't hold back, either, cutting him hard. Laying him open down to the bone.

He let out a strangled cry and let go of his web-line, falling. She almost went after him, but just twenty feet down he was already twisting, firing more webs, swinging a different direction.

Instead of following she rolled the other way, trying not to throw up in her mask. She'd only used the knives on demons before, never on real people. The sword Ben had given her, as well. She'd fought all kinds of nasties, but she'd never cut anybody who bled real blood… with the possible exception of the fake Creed, but even before she'd known he was a demon she'd known he was closer to a demon than a man.

She dropped, skimming between buildings at unsafe speeds. She needed to find May, and get her away from Peter. She needed to find May and keep her safe.

Let the world burn. Let Peter self-destruct. She'd failed May once before, and she didn't plan to fail her again.

2.

She continued criss-crossing the city. Every time Peter came near her she'd fly away, faster than he could swing. She knew May had that almost-clairvoyant sixth sense. If she got close, May could find her.

Assuming Peter hadn't trussed her up so she couldn't.

MJ ground her teeth together. She wasn't going to assume the worst. She wasn't going to accept defeat.

If she had to stop running and face Peter and beat May's location out of him, she would. But for now just looking would be enough.

Nobody stepped up to stop her. No heroes, no villains. Probably they were all excessively confused. Norman's dark Avengers were licking their wounds from the brutal beatdown they'd already received—and Norman himself had to be wondering who she was, exactly. In this outfit she wasn't exactly obviously female, and he had to know his son was out there somewhere, in possession of a Goblin suit.

And the villains? They all knew Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin, and that he had the whole Avengers behind him. And they knew Spider-man was getting darker himself.

Who would dare come out and face them now?

Finally, May did come to join her. Leaping over the rooftops, easily matching pace with a jet engine. MJ swooped down to her daughter, taking off the hideous green mask.

May was wearing the Halloween spider-suit, and it was in pretty bad shape already. It hadn't been intended for combat, and it was torn all over, little cuts and tears. The mask had held up, giving May that blank face.

"May?" said MJ, uncertain.

"He'll follow us," said May. It wasn't a condemnation or a joyful proclamation; it just was.

"That's okay," said MJ quickly. "If we're together, we're safe."

"Where's Creed?"

MJ sighed. "He was a demon, May. Just another demon pretending to be something… part of the devil's trap."

May nodded. "I kind of wondered. He never did sit right with my head… buzzing like he did. I just thought it might be because he was a bad man."

"Here," said MJ. "Climb up with me."

May stood in front of her, crouching on the glider. MJ leaned, letting it go forward. It was more sluggish with two of them, but it had been designed to hold a full-grown man. Together they must have been heavier than Harry, but not by too much.

MJ wrapped her arms around May as they rocketed outward. There was so much in this world that she wanted to protect May from. And the devil was winning, had been winning all along. The rules were stacked against her.

_Thwip_

The getaway was spoiled before it had even begun. He was there suddenly, right on top of them, firing web like mad. Yanking May away, pushing her down to the rooftop below, and punching MJ in the face. This time she couldn't react fast enough and the whole glider went tumbling down.

When it hit the rooftop below, it blew up.

3.

It wasn't a huge explosion. The fuel tanks were nearly empty, anyway, and the bulk of the construction was designed to shield her from anything below. The glider itself became a shield, slamming into her and throwing her away from the blast.

It hit her like a brick wall at ninety miles an hour, squashing her down onto a rooftop. She couldn't even tell if it was the same one she had hit with the glider.

She rolled out from under it, trying to find her balance. Trying to find which way was up.

She could hear the noises, those stupid little noises his webs made as they fired. But she ignored that, tearing the mask away, trying to find him.

He was above her, descending fast, aiming a punch at her. But May was there, and May was faster than him, hitting him in the mid-section. Tossing him away like a rag doll.

But he hit the ground rolling, finding his feet. And MJ knew there was no stopping him. That was the thing she had always known about Peter, even if she hadn't known he was Spider-man. That he was a man who wouldn't stop, wouldn't give up. That he was a man possessed of a singular determination.

Without his usual niceness to temper it, it became something dark and ugly.

She drew the knives again, aware he was ready this time. Knowing they wouldn't help.

May stepped forward, raising her hands. "Don't do this," she said. "You don't want to hurt me… I don't want to hurt you…"

"Then don't go with her," said Peter tightly. "She's lying to you. About everything."

May's face was invisible behind that mask, even if she had been facing towards MJ. She was giving no indications of what his words meant to her, of whether she was listening. MJ's stomach clenched tightly.

"You don't know what it was like before," said May sadly. "I know she's not lying anymore… she can't be. Not about this. Not to me. Let it go, dad. Let it go."

He wasn't going to. MJ could see his muscles tightening as he got ready to make a move.

She slid the knives back into their sheathes. He had a sixth sense. She knew that. Like May's, it would warn of danger. It would tell him if she was about to do something. A precognition, a clairvoyance.

So she didn't reach for the explosives in the pouch at her side. She didn't plan to reach for them. She stood there and waited to see what he would do, trying to leave her mind blank. Open.

When it happened, when he twitched and moved, he was fast. Like a lightning strike. His whole body rolled around May, shoving her back the wrong way, and just like that he was too close to use the explosives.

She backed up, shuffling away, and then he jumped.

He jumped. Nimrod.

Her understanding of physics wasn't great. She was, after all, only an actress. He was a whiz with science, wasn't he? With all kinds of understanding of energy? Why jump, then? Why surrender his advantage? Unless there was some instinct within him that just begged for him to fly, to show off his ability to spring.

She met him in mid-air, plowing into him and knocking him down to earth. While he was jumping his clairvoyance couldn't help him. He managed to fire off a shot of webbing, but it was too late to get him out of her way. She slammed into him like a ton of hot rock, knocking him down.

He bounced up, and she hit him again, so hard that every muscle, every tendon, screamed in agony. The third hit made her bones creak. She could feel her knuckles popping with every blow.

And then he hit her.

She knew his blows were enough to take a god off their feet. She knew he had gone toe to toe with the Juggernaut at least once. She knew he wasn't an easily beaten man.

She was knocked down by it. She hadn't been bracing herself, leaning into it. She'd never done anything remotely like this. Never slung around punches like this either. She hadn't been holding back, and the pain from her knuckles let her know she hadn't been doing it right.

Then May was there, again, facing Peter. He tried going around her, but she was fast. Faster than him. She made his dazzling speed look slow. She made his graceful twists look like a linebacker learning ballet.

He took a swing at her, all that horrendous strength in a bullet-like attack. But she flowed around it, landing two blows on his ribs before he could recover. They both started reacting before the other started to throw a punch, but May's speed advantage meant she could land them, and he couldn't.

But then he got inventive.

He sprayed web fluid over her, sticking her to the ground. The web was faster than his arm, fast enough to pin her down, and take her out of the game. Then he started for MJ again.

Not that she'd been just lying on the ground waiting for him to come. She was up and moving, heading for the wreckage of the glider.

As he came at her she scattered bombs with short fuses on the ground between them, letting the rumbling explosions keep him off her. She didn't send them far enough for him to grab them, send them back. With his clairvoyance he would always know if he had time to grab it and fling it back, and with his speed he could always dodge. She had to play this differently. Had to play this smart.

He sprang then, going up over the explosions and coming down beside her. She turned, swinging one hand at him in a punch. He dodged, but that was what she had been hoping for. Knowing that he could tell it was coming, she hadn't put much force behind the first blow. She'd aimed low, trying to get him to jump over it. He did.

And her other hand was wrapped securely around one corner of the still-intact wing from the glider, swinging it around right at him. It slammed into his stomach, knocking him back twenty feet, tumbling and falling across the roof.

She dropped the heavy wing, running back towards May, who was straining against the webbing. MJ pulled her knives out, cutting through the webbing with quick swipes. After just two it was weak enough for May to pull free.

"We've gotta fly, baby," said MJ.

May nodded. "Follow me."

MJ wasn't sure she could. May ran to the edge of the roof and jumped, arcing gracefully out to the next rooftop. MJ ran out, her heart pounding. It was an awful long way down from here.

She managed to make the jump, trying not to look down. Her jumped was short and not graceful at all. She flailed a few times in mid-air, trying to reach the target roof.

She just made it, hitting the roof and rolling. May was heading for a door, and MJ struggled to her feet, following.

May kicked the heavy security door open. "We've got to go to ground… he can find us if we stay visible."

MJ followed her, trying to trust her daughter's skills.


	11. Chapter 11

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

After a little while running they thought to change out of the wild costumes, back into their street clothes. They had to pick up some new clothes for May at a thrift shop, since her old ones had been left behind and she only had her underthings on beneath the costume.

MJ grabbed a duffel bag at the same place, so they could carry the costumes along as well.

MJ was more certain than ever that they couldn't trust anybody. Every time she relied on people it put them deeper into the devil's plans. Every time she tried to make things better, she made it worse.

When they found a tiny hotel room and sat down to eat May was subdued, keeping her eyes down. Not looking at MJ.

"What did he say?" asked MJ.

"Huh?" May pretended not to understand.

"Peter said something to you." MJ tried to harden her heart, tried to keep this all straight in her head. "He's made you question your role in this… made you think about the devil, about the deal, about what we're doing."

"Not really," said May. "I mean, he said stuff to try and do that. But mostly… Mostly he was nice. And that creeped me out."

"He's not usually a bad man," said MJ. She wanted to hug May, hold her close, but May looked on edge. And when she got on edge it probably wasn't a good idea to push her. She had grown up in Hell, after all. In torment and service to the devil.

She could be a little touchy about personal space.

May took a deep breath, her hands curling into fists. "What now?"

MJ thought about it seriously. "My bet with the devil… the deal was for a chance to save Peter. And you. But I don't think we can get him back. The devil played his hand too well. And I'm not sure what'll happen if we give up… if we get dragged back to hell."

"Like to see him try it!" snarled May.

MJ nodded. "Maybe… maybe we just run away. Run away fast. He'll stay here, in New York. We can go anywhere else. Start a new life, just you and me."

May looked down, considering this. Seriously thinking about it. And for a second, MJ thought she had won. Thought they could be safe.

"The thing is… one of the things he said to me… we have great power, you know. I mean, sure, we're not as strong as, say, the god of war, or the sentry, or any of these others. But I'm fast enough to avoid getting hit by them, smart enough to find their weak points, and strong enough to exploit them. Basically, what I'm saying is this… I have great power. I can take down villains or heroes. I can do anything. And he said… with great power comes great responsibility. And I'd never… I never thought of it that way. Tell me, did he…? Did he always act… like a hero?"

MJ plumbed memories real and fake, trying to think back into a timeline she hadn't lived. "I think from the time he was around your age he was a hero," she said softly. "He was just a kid in high school. A target for bullies. His life was crap, his aunt depended on him… but he… he… He put on that silly costume every day, and went out and protected those who didn't have the power to protect themselves. Even when it hurt. Even when he didn't want to."

May nodded. "I thought so. He said I was just a kid, that I didn't have to do any of this… and you just said we could go somewhere else, do anything else. But that's not the right thing to do, is it? Because if we let him go bad, we know the whole world will go down. His refusal to kill makes him a not-terribly-effective good guy… but as a bad guy, he would just kill everybody. You know it. I know it. It's… the devil is laughing."

MJ could almost hear that laughter. She nodded.

May smiled. "There's only one way this is going to work, one way we can do this. There's only one right thing to do. I don't know if I can do it, if I can talk him down without having to hurt him, but I know it's the only way. If I beat him down, he'll come back up more evil. If I let him beat me, he'll be more evil. If I run away, he'll turn evil. I mean, I don't know much about right and wrong… I'm not even sure what kind of person I am. I've been in hell all my life. But… I have that power. I know I have that power! And I… I want to use it right."

The worst part was that MJ should have known it was coming. May, it seemed, had all that was best about Peter. The stark heroism. The willingness to sacrifice herself.

And the power.

MJ's hands were shaking, and she wasn't sure if it was the goblin serum she'd taken to try to face Peter or the emotions running through her wildly.

She was so used to thinking of May as fragile, so used to protecting her, that she'd forgotten that May's first instinct was to protect her mother, that May was so much like Peter that eventually she would think to protect the whole world.

It was more terrifying than flying had been. She'd only truly been a mother for a few weeks. She'd only discovered her daughter recently. And she could only half-remember that feeling in her gut whenever she'd seen Peter swing out to protect the world. The feeling that he might not be back, that the city was more important to him than her. That feeling that she had to share him. That feeling that she might lose him.

It was so much harder when it was her child. When her baby, only fourteen (or so) was telling her how she would lay her life on the line to save the world.

MJ nodded slowly. "We'll need a new plan."

2.

What was MJ doing?

Making plans to save the world. Going up on rooftops in a goblin costume, waiting for Peter. Dosing on goblin serum so that when he showed up she would be able to stand up to him.

Sheer insanity!

She stood there, looking around. Waiting and watching. A military helicopter was circling high overhead, but didn't take a shot at her. Didn't fly down to confront her. She assumed they were scared, and was glad of this. She didn't want to endanger ordinary people in this confrontation.

She felt that crawling feeling in the back of her head as he arrived, some sixth sense letting her know he was there.

When he arrived she spread her arms wide, trying to look as peaceful as possible. "Let's talk, Peter," she said quietly.

"Where'd you take my daughter?" he asked, cold and angry.

She sighed. "I don't trust you enough to leave her alone with you, and you don't trust me enough to leave her alone with me. I get that. That's fine. But she's a person. She's got her own idea about where she should be… so you and I are just going to have to respect her choices. Okay?"

He shook his head, looking away. That blank, empty, angry mask he wore made this so much more difficult.

She tried again. "Peter, I wanted to leave this city. Run away as far and as hard as I could. I was going to. Take her so you'd never see her again." His whole body was tense. She could see him hunching over. Practically trembling with tension. "But she cares what happens to you. She wants to protect you… save you. Now, you can reject that, run away… do whatever. I can't make myself care at this point. But if you want… we can talk about this like adults. We can sit down and talk about what's going with you, with me, with her. We can work out what to do."

He shifted from one foot to the other. "This another ambush?"

"No. No, and the other one wasn't either. Don't give me that. I know you don't trust me. I've done… questionable things. But don't act like you're innocent in this. I know… I know! You nearly killed Osborn. Didn't you? Crossed that line… danced over it… danced on his grave."

He shook his head again, but now there was no conviction to it. It was a slow shake, with some hesitation. She pressed the point. "Peter, you and I aren't close now. But I know you care what happens to May… otherwise you wouldn't have tried to take her from me. I won't let you just take her… but I'm prepared to let you into her life. If you fight me on this, you'll just drive her away. If you try to take her away, you'll alienate her completely."

It was true. She wasn't sure if he would believe it.

He turned back to face her. "What do you propose? Shared custody? Playdates and weekends?" There was scorn in his voice. She had to remind herself that his anger was mostly well-founded. Somebody was manipulating him… a master manipulator.

She smiled. "Yeah, something along those lines. Let's just start by all three of us going for a walk. Through the park. Civilian clothes. Like a family. Can you do that, Peter?"

He growled something under his breath. "When?"

"When can you do it?" she countered.

He nodded. "Tonight… about six. I have work."

He jumped up, into the air, firing webs and swinging away as quick as he could. Disappearing into the skyline.

She headed back the way she'd come, waving jauntily to the camera.

Now, phase two.

3.

She stopped by to see Harry after she was sure Peter was long gone. The coffee shop was closed for the night, the lights out. She knocked on the door, knowing he was out back. "It's me, Harry," she called.

He came to the door. He looked haunted… unwell.

"Hey, MJ," he said. He looked like a ghost.

"Have you been drinking?" she asked him flatly.

He shook his head. "I've been… thinking. About my place in the world… my father's empire. All that stuff. Come in?"

She followed him in. "Harry, I need to ask you some… uncomfortable questions. Will you answer them?"

He nodded balefully. "I didn't go to Peter like you asked. I'm sorry. I just can't! Not with the way things are between him and my dad… I just can't!"

"I'm not here about that, Harry," she said patiently. "I'm here about you. Can we sit down?"

He picked one of the empty tables and sat down. In the darkness his eyes fell into shadow, so she couldn't see his expression. She sat down opposite him.

"So, you were dead," she said flatly.

"What? I was not," he replied.

"Let me finish. You were dead, but there was some kind of time travel thing… something changed. In the past. And as a result, you're alive again. Brought back from the dead. The thing is… the thing is, Harry, the guy who brought you back, the one who changed the past? One of the bad guys."

He snorted. "You think I'm a villain, back from the grave?" he asked harshly.

"No… I'm the one who's back from the grave running around with superpowers and starting my own team to fight the Avengers," she said flatly. "I don't think you're the bad guy, Harry. But I think that the bad guy is trying to use us—both of us—to bring Peter down. I'm coming straight to you on this because I'm not going to dance around this for another minute. I'm not going to ask you for weapons and then not tell you what's going on. Because if I do that, I'm playing into our enemy's hands. Do you know how important Peter is?"

"Spider-man's just a chump," said Harry dismissively. "Sure, he takes down criminals and super-criminals in New York, but this is the real world. There are higher stakes."

She smiled gently at him. "There are no higher stakes. Peter's just a second-string hero, sure. But the end-game isn't Peter as a hero. It's Peter as a villain. Think about that for a minute."

Harry's features took on a set that would have looked more comfortable on his father.

"You were a villain, weren't you?" she asked softly. "For a little while. Blowing things up… trying to kill Peter. But not now. What if Peter killed your father? What then?"

"I don't know." His voice was hoarse. "If he crossed that line… I almost couldn't take it last time. I was descending into madness. This time? I might just go all the way."

"What would that do to Peter?" she prompted.

He turned away from her, and she could see his anger, hot and throbbing. She wasn't a psychiatrist or a counselor; she had no idea how to deal with his rage, his anger. She had no idea how to channel it away, to make him understand. She was scared of him.

She tried to keep her voice calm, pressing for the end-game. "They're trying to make Peter a killer… sending your father after him isn't enough. If he snapped and killed your father that's only halfway. That's only up to… that's only up to the level of somebody like the Punisher. That won't make him flat-out evil. Won't make him kill heroes. But if he killed you… his best friend… if you went after him…"

"I will!" snarled Harry. "If he touches my dad…"

"The one you hate?" she asked sadly.

Harry leaned forward, so she could see his eyes. "A man's father is still his father, even if you hate him!" he snapped.

"So help me," she said. "Help me make sure Peter doesn't kill your father… don't wait for him to do it, act all surprised, and then get mad. Be proactive, Harry. Help me."

4.

Walking in the park with May was fun. No, better than fun. It was a warm, family moment. For a minute they were just a mother and her teenaged daughter, walking in the park and looking at the animals.

They sat down on a bench overlooking the river, and just watched it flow by for a while. There wasn't much water in hell. It was a welcome change for both of them.

"I used to wonder what having parents would be like," said May. "Wonder what being normal would be like. I thought it would be like… be like being a princess. Like having a castle and a dragon. You'd have a safe place, you'd have fun, everybody would love you… I couldn't imagine it, but I thought that was what it would be like."

MJ wished she didn't have to be such a disappointment to May. "I wish I could give you all that."

May grinned at her. "Are you kidding? This is that. You and he are both so protective you're scared to death the other one will take me, and even the scariest things here are just funny compared to hell. If I could get a set of webs like he has, I think I would have everything."

MJ smiled back at her daughter. "There's more to life than webbing."

May shrugged. "Not my life."

It was a trouble statement. MJ tried to keep from frowning, but couldn't quite. "May… you're just a little girl," she said quietly. "There's still school… and boys… and dreams. You can do anything… be anything you want to be. Not just…"

May grinned, putting a hand on MJ's shoulder. "I want to be a spider. Don't worry about it."

But MJ couldn't help but worry. There was a whole life out there waiting for May… maybe not a normal one. Not after everything that came before.

Peter arrived then. He looked unhappy still, angry. MJ waved, getting his attention. They made room for him on the bench beside May, on the far side from MJ. MJ was pretty sure this was deliberate on May's part; trying to keep them far enough apart to avoid a fight.

"Hi, Peter," said MJ.

"Do I call you dad or Peter?" asked May innocently.

"Dad is fine," he said gruffly.

MJ wondered how this must feel to him. To go from single and carefree to a father in one fell swoop. To be tied down suddenly with responsibilities you never knew you had. Boxed in.

She supposed she knew better than most. "So, you're a teacher now, Peter?" she asked cautiously.

"That's right," he said tightly.

"I'm wondering about sending May to school. She hasn't really had any schooling at all—I don't think she really wants to either."

May scoffed. "School? That's the place they send the normal kids to learn to read and write, isn't it?"

Peter gave her a sharp glance, picking up immediately on the 'normal' bit. "That's where we send kids your age, yes," he said.

"She's probably behind her age group… I can try tutoring her, getting her up to speed."

"And when you're at work?" asked Peter.

She thought about how they'd been surviving on the ill-gotten gains the demon masquerading as Sabretooth had brought them. "We haven't had to cross that bridge yet," she said quietly.

His eyes narrowed, and he looked away. He looked far too young to have a fourteen year old daughter—barely thirty-five, at best. She'd seen him in that silly jumpsuit, and knew he didn't have an ounce of fat on him, but his face was still stubbornly round.

He looked like a teenager. Like a boy trying to be a man.

MJ leaned back in the bench, trying to relax. Trying not to think about all the goblin serum in her blood, the unnatural strength flowing through her. Why had Norman Osborn been so obsessed with power, so interested in having this? Why was he still gathering power to himself?

Peter leaned forward. "So, we're just one big happy family," he said sarcastically.

MJ shrugged. She had hoped he wouldn't be angry, now that he was sitting beside May. Had hoped he would calm down. And she wasn't sure what to say to calm him down.

May slouched between the two of them, unsure. Confused. Stuck in the middle.

MJ sighed. "Anyway, May was just telling me how envious she is of your web shooting thingies. She—"

"No," he said flatly.

May groaned. "Really? Come on."

"I don't want you running around like that—putting on the costume and going out. That's dangerous," he said.

The flat-out hypocrisy of it astonished MJ for a second. It was too dangerous to do exactly what he did?

But then the obviousness of it struck her. He did what he did so that nobody else would have to. He did what he did so that others would be safe. Of course he would want to protect his loved ones from it as well. Of course he would say that.

She sighed. "Peter, you and I… we aren't the kind of people who beat around the bush, right? We have something to say, we say it."

He groaned, looking away. "Please, spare me," he said flatly.

"You're defensive, you're angry, and this is just uncomfortable."

"And that's my fault?" he snapped.

"I'm not going to argue fault," she said, thinking back on all her blunders and missteps escaping from hell. About the people she'd allowed the demon wearing Sabretooth's face to kill. About donning the goblin suit and flying around the city on a glider. "I'm not going to tell you that you did it wrong, or that you are in the wrong, or anything like that. I'm not in that business. I will tell you that if you can't be at least a little bit pleasant here, sitting on a park bench, in broad daylight, then don't expect us to be all too eager to set up our next meeting. I know you're angry, but I'd really like to try to give May something like a normal life—something she's been pretty well deprived of so far."

"And that's my fault too, I suppose?" he asked nastily.

She wilted a little bit, but stuck her chin out at him defiantly, balling her hands into fists. "You're at least as responsible as I am, Peter. I know I've done wrong—I know I've been wrong. But I didn't get to this point alone. Now, do you think you can be pleasant enough for the three of us to go find someplace to eat, or are you going to be like this?"

For a second his face was more a mask than the red scrap of cloth he usually wore over it. For a second those little-boy-lost good looks showed nothing at all, and she was scared. Because the cold and calculating side of him was the worst part, was the demon within that might someday turn this world to ashes.

Harry was right. As a good guy, he was too noble. He never killed his enemies, never crossed that line.

"We can go to dinner," he said.

5.

MJ counted through the money they had left carefully. She needed to get a job, start replenishing the money. She needed to figure out whether it was safe to send May to a school. Maybe to the school where Peter taught? He could watch over her then. Keep her safe.

May was watching the news on TV. She had a very serious mind… she didn't smile or laugh much at all. MJ wanted so badly to change that.

How would other kids treat her? MJ shuddered at the thought.

May twisted around. "He's wearing a different costume tonight."

MJ's heart skipped a beat. It was a blurry, distant image of Peter, bounding across rooftops. In the dim light it was hard to make out.

But he was wearing black again.


	12. Chapter 12

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

Meeting with Peter in the daytime while running around behind his back at night was starting to become a habit for MJ. It wasn't a particularly good habit, either.

She was out with Harry and May tonight, on a mission. They weren't wearing costumes tonight, just all black with ski masks.

Harry was good at this running over rooftops. Practiced. He would run and vault effortlessly to the next roof, no matter how far it was.

He was still pissed at MJ for blowing up his glider. It wasn't as if he could just ask his dad for another one, he had said. She was pretty sure if he did ask his dad for another one his dad would be wildly pleased and would just give him a new one immediately.

But, what did she know about crazy dysfunctional families?

She vaulted after her daughter, who was having far too much fun with this.

They were attempting a midnight assault on a superhero prison. The very thought of this was making her heart beat faster and her mouth go dry.

Every time she thought this was as close as she would get to being a villain, she was forced into acting just a little bit more villainous. Every time she thought she was normalizing things with Peter, he would go out and act just a little rougher. A little edgier. He would scare people more.

Norman Osborn's Avengers were hanging back now, just waiting. But sooner or later they would decide to come for Peter again. They would regather. They would try to force the weak links within the team to be strong.

And she knew with that much raw firepower, they would do a lot of damage. It would be hard to stop them without killing. Hard to be the heroes.

When she told Harry of her concern, he had just shrugged. "Then cheat," he'd said.

It was an insight that blew her away and humbled her, while scaring her.

Cheating was a way of life to everybody else in this game. As long as she thought inside the box, worked within the rules, she'd be weak. She'd be vulnerable. If she changed, became more like them, then she could be safer. Secure.

Cheating was a way of life to these people. They were ruthless and vicious. They were ready and able to think this way. If she changed and became like them, then she'd be a monster like them.

May was adjusting to this new reality so much better than MJ, in part because she understood that there was a line between hero and villain. And she was ready to embrace the role of hero, ready to be something other than the victim hell had chewed up and spit out.

MJ was prouder than she could possibly express of her daughter. The grace and will to endure after being in hell… that was more than she had for herself.

MJ was still ready to give up on Peter and the world. For their sakes, it was a good thing she still was filled with the desire to bring May up right, to make her as good as possible. Because MJ, on her own, would abandon them.

May wanted to help, thought it was right to help, and so they would help. So that May would have a clean conscience. So that she could be the hero. So that she wouldn't the kind of monster MJ was prepared to become, the kind of monster Peter was in the middle of becoming.

May was the quickest and lightest of the three. She could also jump and catch the side of a building, using that as a springboard for an even higher leap. Her acts of acrobatics were insane.

They arrived at the government holding facility in downtown a little before midnight. A car might have been quicker, but it would have left a trail. They were trying to do this quietly, covering up all evidence.

They were wearing ski masks. This, more than anything else, represented how far astray they had gone.

But if they were going to outmaneuver the devil, they needed to think outside the box.

There were guards. MJ had told May to try not to hurt them, and had hated herself for giving those orders. With May holding back she was vulnerable, giving them a chance to hurt her. With May caring what happened to them they would have a chance to use their guns, to kill her.

But it was part of the balancing act. Trying to keep Peter from turning dark wasn't nearly as important to MJ as keeping May from turning dark. And May was already most of the way there. MJ was sure that while the devil had her she'd been forced to do terrible things… or, worse, had chosen them.

May dove down from the roof, landing on ground between the two guards covering the back door. She spun, kicking them both, knocking them back to the ground.

MJ and Harry made their way down the fire escape.

"Are you dosed up on the goblin juice?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah… are you?"

"No. I'm all cold turkey and stuff."

"You jump pretty well for all that."

"It… it stays in your system. The more you use, the longer you use it. And in your brain. I mean, it's not like… not like evil in a bottle or anything. But it takes a toll."

She wasn't sure if she could trust Harry's advice anymore. He wasn't the friend he'd always been, and he wasn't normal any longer. He was a stranger, filled with anger, a pawn in the devil's hands. She was trying to use him, trying to pull him into her web.

But when you tried to manipulate the devil, weren't you in just as much danger of being manipulated by him? When you tried to take his toys, what stopped him from using that against you?

They got inside fairly easily. There was security everywhere, but it was all focused inward, on the holding cells. The cameras pointing out were easy enough to avoid. The guards were easy to get around.

They moved in level by level, floor by floor, moving slowly and paying attention to their surroundings. Harry had assured MJ that his contacts in his father's department were reliable, but she still expected a trap.

The problem was that they needed help handling the Avengers. Even May and Peter together couldn't stand up to them without having to kill them to stay alive. And putting May in the field made it more likely he would do something terrible, not less likely. He was as driven to protect their daughter as MJ was.

Having Harry working with her was a start. Even if he wasn't currently taking the serum, he was tougher than he should have been. Powerful.

And he was the devil's.

Harry hesitated. "This is the place. Are you sure about this?"

She hated that question. She wasn't sure of anything any more. Once upon a time she had been so sure it was the right thing to do that she had made a deal with the devil. She had played with evil because it seemed right. To save a single life, she had sacrificed her own happiness. But she had done it blindly, with no thought to the consequences.

She couldn't remember making the decision that had damned her, damned Peter, and damned their daughter. She couldn't remember being sure of it, but she knew that she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't been completely sure of it.

She was even more sure now, and that very firmness of conviction terrified her.

"Let's do this," she said, turning to follow his line of sight. There was the cell they were after, the criminal they had come here to break out.

She kicked the door open.

The alarms started immediately. There were no guards here, which was good. She would have been forced to kill any guards, and that would have led to guilt and recriminations.

The lone figure in the room was standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by an array of equipment she assumed was meant to neutralize his powers. He glared at her, squinting. "What is this?" he demanded.

"Jail break," she replied flatly. "We're about to be surrounded; if you want to go, we've got to go now."

It was all in the timing now. Harry had run this down to the second, going over and over it. He was running now, heading for the command center at the heart of the building. May was heading the other way, towards the exit, getting ready to provide their distraction.

That left MJ with the criminal they had worked so hard to break out of prison.

She started disabling the equipment that was keeping his powers in check, flipping switches at random.

"What is this all about?" he asked cautiously. "I don't know if you know this, but I'm a little bit reformed these days."

She had never met him before, but she sincerely doubted that he was truly reformed. Still, Harry had said he had a reputation as being careful and sane in a crazy town. "The word is that you wouldn't go along with Norman Osborn, wouldn't be one of his puppets, so he took you down," she said. "Word is that you'd like to get some back."

He frowned at her. "Don't know if you realize this, but there's no money in revenge, and it usually ends in a showdown with the enemy. And Norman Osborn isn't just one of the most powerful men in America, he's also one of the strongest, and with that armor he wears, nigh-invulnerable."

Sensible words coming from a man who had first built a dangerous weapon and then found a way to internalize it. He did dangerous things in his bid for power. He wasn't above hurting or killing the innocent.

"We won't be going straight up against him," she told him. "We're working under his radar—trying to do things smart. He's got all the power right now. If we want to take back any of that power, we have to work together. I've got folks with real power on my side… are you in?"

As she took off the last of the restraints the air around him started to hum. He crossed his arms across his chest, trying to hold it in. "I need my shock-suit," he said tightly, through chattering teeth. "I can't function without it."

She nodded. "Follow close behind me, and don't slow down or we'll get caught."

2.

They ran for what seemed like forever, through dark corridors. They ran down stairs, across empty levels, and finally into the lower levels sewer access.

Running with a villain at her back didn't even slow her down. The floor rumbling and shaking underneath her from his power signature didn't bother her in the least.

But her heart was racing. Her stomach was up in her throat. She felt sick.

May was out there, alone, providing a distraction. Harry was out there, finding the other stuff they had come here for.

"I said I need a dampening suit!" snarled the villain. He sounded mildly cross, but not evil. Not like the sort of person who would kill people for money.

"Keep going," she said. "We aren't entirely unprepared."

They had already essentially escaped. As long as May was loud and easily spotted, without getting caught, and as long as Harry was stealthy, nobody would know what they had done. Nobody would understand.

Not until they found out the Shocker had gone missing. Not until they realized that somebody was forming a group of villains.

They left through the sewers, which were essentially unguarded. Harry had already shorted out the security systems, including the cameras, from the center of the beast. May must have been doing quite well, because nobody came after them.

Too busy chasing her.

MJ headed for the safe house Harry had found for them, a cheap apartment in the middle of nowhere. A place where they had stashed all their things, at least temporarily.

Here they had the Shocker-suit that Harry had stolen days earlier. Here they had the new glider he had stolen from his father.

Here, they had the goblin juice.

The Shocker chuckled, seeing his suit. "That's the old one," he said. "I have newer models."

"It was what we could get!" she snapped. "Will it work?"

"Yeah… it'll dampen the shocks, keep me from shaking the ground so any idiot with a seismograph can find me, at least. So, in a nut, you guys want to take on the most powerful man on earth?"

She smiled. "Like I said, not openly. Look, you're free to walk out the door now; put on your Shock-suit and go find some small-scale con. But be warned, most the super-villains are onto this whole gig of Norman Osborn's… he's taking them down, and hard, if they give trouble. Work's sparse. We're working our way up nice and slow…"

He stopped her, lifting a hand and grabbing her. His hand closed on her neck, but not tightly, just enough to turn her head to face him. He was fast, faster than she had expected. She tensed up, but he just peered into her eyes. In that mask, his eyes were blank orbs, much like Peter's mask. Just smaller, shaped like his eyes. She hadn't realized how much of a person you couldn't see any longer when their pupils were gone.

"You're a dead person walking, you know," he said conversationally.

"Are you threatening me?" she asked, gritting her teeth.

He shook his head, pushing her away. "What am I gonna threaten you with? Kill you? Somebody already did that once, didn't they? Yeah, you learn to see that look, the little hint of hellfire in a person's eyes. You've been dead, babe. Dead and buried. And you came back. Listen, I thank you for saving me from jail—I mean that truly and sincerely. I hated that place. But I'm not going to help you. Not for a minute."

She was flummoxed. Since when was anybody able to look her in the eye and see what haunted her every day, see the brimstone that chased her? "What are you going to do, then?"

He shrugged. "Go back to small-time crime, or big-time crime? Avoid a fight with the Spider, or pick one. I've tried a lot of things, and not much worked, but I've got some very, very clear rules. I don't step up to any fight that's bigger than me. I don't get in the way of heaven, hell, or anything bigger than I can hit. Look at me; my special power, the thing that I do, is that I shake things. Do I wanna shake something big? Got a firm rule. I don't mess around with primal forces. I fought the big boys just once, went after the Avengers. Know what happened? Aliens attacked. Frickin` aliens! The Avengers saved my ass. Am I gonna mess with them? Spider-man, he ain't shit. He fights crime, that's it. He's as big as I aim. That's it. The tops. The shit you're in? There's not enough money in this world to make me step in it."

She felt rage boiling up, starting at the back of her neck, and her hands squeezed into fists. She had the power, right now. She could break his neck, snap it easier than anything she'd ever done. Like popping open a can of diet soda. Like nothing.

She carefully relaxed her fingers. "You're saying you won't help me, but you'll owe me a favor? Oddly paradoxical."

He waved a hand at her. "Don't use fancy words on me. Do I look dumb? I said I won't get involved. And I owe ya. You want to collect? Ask me to knock over a bank. Ask me to kill somebody. I'll do it, and fer free. …not Osborn, don't get any ideas. See, knowing your place in this world… that's important. I've tried to move up once or twice, but not by jumping all the way to the top. Not by being stupid. If you want to survive, you have to play smart. You have to play by the rules."

She wondered if he knew whose rules he was playing by right now. He thought he was smart, that he had outfoxed the devil. "You'll find out what hell is like soon enough," she said coolly. "You think eternal torment is funny? You think you can play by the rules there, and get taken seriously? Even a good person burns there. You think you can be safe?"

He turned very slowly to face her. "Hell? Who said anything about hell?"

She brushed that aside. "You think you have this life under control? You're playing his game right now. You have no control. You're just a puppet—and you'll get yours, Herman."

He spun around, aiming a hand at her. She knew what his powers could do—knew what his schtick was. But feeling it directed at her was a hundred times different. It wasn't just a tingle, just a shaking. It was like getting punched, again and again and again. It wasn't a vibration; it was an explosion.

It hurled her back into the wall, slamming her down and leaving her gasping and breathless for a moment. She was numb, all pins and needles, stabbing into her, but with no sensation of the floor beneath her.

"Don't give me a lecture!" he snapped coldly. "I've been a villain long enough to know where that goes. One minute you're lecturing me, then you try to kill me, preying on my foibles and weaknesses—I may not be big leagues, but I am _not_ a patsy! I'm going now. Try to stop me, and I'll kill, no matter what I owe you."

She managed to get up, even though she couldn't feel the floor. "Don't be stupid," she managed to mumble through numb lips.

He raised a hand, aiming it at her. "Choose your next words really wisely, okay?" he said dangerously.

"I wasn't alone when I broke you out; you know that," she said, trying to keep her diction clear. She'd once had to act an outdoors scene in a thin night-gown. The wind had chilled her, but she'd been able to keep speaking clearly all night. Even when she was turning blue. She could do this too. "The others are coming back here to meet me. You walk outside without me, and they might just assume this went bad, that you killed me—and they're exactly level-headed, you know what I mean? So you just chill here till they show up, and then you can go. When it won't mean having to face a few overly active imaginations in mortal combat."

He paused, and his hand rose a few inches, so that he wasn't pointing it at her. "Well, that's… oddly nice of ya," he said.

She shook her head. "We've gotten away pretty cleanly so far; the cops are a few steps behind us. We tear up downtown fighting you, and there's no way we walk away from this without getting all kinds of crap splashed on us."

He took the mask back off. He was smiling now. "Well, it is nice to know you have some good sense," he allowed.

"And I haven't given up on recruiting you yet, either," she said, waving a hand at the wall. "See, you're smart. You're a survivor. And right now I have a bunch of loose cannons on my payroll. Right now I have to try to outthink everyone and everything. And I know I'm falling behind."

"Not a winning pitch, sweetie," he replied. Now both his hands were pointed at the floor.

"You said Spider-man's as far up as you aim, because he's strictly small-time. He fights crime, right? But you're wrong. He's a lot bigger than you realize… he's going to kill the Avengers."

"You mean Osborn's Avengers?"

"Them too. I'm mired deep in the devil's plans, but he gave me a snapshot, a picture. He's using Osborn to rile the Spider up until he turns bad… and when he turns bad, it's not going to be like it is now. You know him; you know he holds back. He doesn't kill. When he snaps, he's going to kill a lot of people. Mostly heroes. You talked about how the Avengers saved your life that one time. Well, no more. Aliens invade? They'll face only him. And he'll be as bad or worse. He'll need power… and you know Venom? The alien that looks like him? He'll take it back. He'll put it back on."

The door opened. Quietly, with just a hint of a squeak. May walked inside very calmly, wearing jeans and a tee now. She gave a quick wave, checking over her shoulder once before closing the door.

MJ had to clench her teeth against the sudden rush of nausea. She was pretty sure that the worst part of all this was the knowledge that she could still lose, and badly. She could lose May, snatched away, taken back to Hell. Snatched by Mephisto.

May gave the Shocker a mild smile. It was easy to forget that she was so jaded, that she had survived a very long time in hell.

MJ tapped him on the shoulder gently. "All right. If you want to go, you can go. But when the world starts ending…"

"That's the hero's job," snarled Herman, glowering at May suspiciously.

"They aren't doing this. How're we supposed to tell them their world is going to end soon?"

"You do this, and you're heroes," he replied, pointing a finger at May. "She's got power, the kind that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. You can't tell me that's just my imagination, either. You can't tell me that you started doing this to get rich, or to be somebody. You're being noble, and do you know what that gets you? It gets you killed. It gets you shot. It gets you a ton of enemies. Do you know how many people have wanted to kill Spider-man over the years? Besides me. You know, I even had the chance once. I had the shot."

MJ's blood ran cold, despite herself. Despite her resolve that she was done worrying about Peter, done with that drama. "What happened? Why didn't you?"

"I'm not completely cold-blooded. I'm not total scum. Maybe that's my weakness, maybe it's my strength. But you're—you're kidding yourself, here. You're the heroes of this piece, the people fighting for what's right. I don't play in those leagues, I don't fight those battles. Goodbye."

He was halfway out the door when Harry hit him. It was a solid hit, metal pipe right across the ribs. Herman stumbled back, through the door, falling down.

Harry stepped out from the shadows, smirking. His eyes were smoldering and dark.

"Maybe you haven't been listening to the lady," he said, and his voice was cold. There wasn't anything human left in it. "We're in a fight. The kind of fight you don't go halfway on. Consider your options here… and try that answer again."

MJ covered her ears, and dove for May, trying to get her away from the two of them. What came next was no surprise at all—the Shocker unleashed the full force of his power, and the floor seemed to explode under MJ's feet. She stumbled and was thrown, running into a wall that was also vibrating.

May was thrown into the wall as well.

Harry was unmoved.

"Oh, really?" he asked sarcastically. "You think I'm stupid, Herman? While I was in that prison I found where they were keeping your suit." He taped his black-clad chest, which had become bulkier, realized MJ, trying to focus through bleary eyes. "Your costume that absorbs vibrations, protecting the wearer. It's a lot more powerful than your old one—I think I can take your shocks better than you can, just now. You really want to throw that power around?"

There was a moment when MJ saw the Shocker's fists relax a bit. They lowered slightly, dipping so they weren't aimed straight at Harry.

This hadn't been part of the plan. This wasn't part of any plan, ever. This was stupid.

Harry didn't wait for a reply, smashing Herman in the face with the pipe this time, a wild swing. He let out a wordless snarl, a sound that was horrifying, alien, inhuman.

As he raised the pipe again, May sprang into action, kicking off the wall and flying across the room in a heartbeat, knocking Harry off his feet before he could even swing the pipe down, moving faster than thought, faster than MJ could follow.

They smashed through the door behind him, knocking it off the hinges. Before they hit the ground she had grabbed the wall, using it as leverage to throw him away, to one side, out of MJ's line of sight.

Then she jumped after him.

Herman was curled up in a little ball on the floor moaning. MJ crawled over to him slowly, propping him up and carefully peeling his mask back. His nose was a ruined mess, with blood smeared over his face everywhere.

"We're gonna need to get you to a doctor," she said, lifting him up to his feet. "Can you walk?"

He chuckled, spitting blood out on the floor. "Let go of me," he said, pushing her away. "See, you might have mentioned that you had crazies on your team. That's the other thing I don't do. No heroics, no stupid things, no crazies! Is there a back way out of here?"

He slipped away quietly, leaving MJ with even less hope than she'd been carrying around before.


	13. Chapter 13

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

Ever since they had spanked Norman Osborn's Avengers, New York had become a strange place. Everybody knew Spider-man was still around, and that he was keeping a certain amount of law and order going. But they also had seen him lose it and try to kill Norman Osborn on TV.

Crime was plummeting.

At the same time, there were a lot of helicopters in the air, spy drones high overhead, and men in suits. The government was getting ready to reimpose their own brand of order at the first opportunity. Just as soon as they figured out if they could, in fact, take on the Spider-man and his unknown allies and win.

Things were still escalating, just the way the devil wanted.

They hadn't managed to recruit anybody to help them. The supervillains didn't want to get involved, even the ones with an iota of sense. Anybody who could even be considered a little bit heroic considered them scary and dangerous.

Harry was losing control.

MJ wasn't sure how well May was holding up. Sure, she would look bright and cheerful when they were out in the daylight, during their lunches with Peter, while he was so quiet and brooding.

But at night—that was when May would really shine. That was when she put on the costume and tore across rooftops, practically flying.

Peter wasn't concerning himself with petty crime any more. He was too bogged down in the bigger problems facing him, in the circumstances. He was becoming distant, strange.

May filled the gap.

Every morning she came home tired and bruised. Every day MJ scanned the newspaper, finding dozens to hundreds of incidents where May had thrown down with everything from muggers to minor supervillains.

MJ didn't know how to feel about this. Sure, it meant that May had a moral center. That no matter how terribly they had failed at saving Peter, that she had not failed to instill in May a conscience, a sense of what place she occupied in this world.

But it also meant that she came home black and blue. That she faced men with guns, knives, large suits of armor and chainsaws, dogs, lions, whatever creatures of the night MJ was unaware of. It meant she came home with blood dripping from her nose, staining her costume. With big blotchy bruises across her face.

This morning MJ found herself stitching up a cut that had grazed May's ribs. Her hands were shaking. For all the blood she had seen, she still wasn't inured to this.

"Don't worry, I heal fast," said May, picking up on her concern. "I'll eat a lot, maybe go for a run, and it'll be a scar by bed-time. If you stitch it neat, not even all that much of a scar."

MJ pressed the flesh together, marveling at the hard muscle just under her daughter's skin, terrified by the ease with which the girl accepted violence and pain. "You should see a real doctor."

"And how would I explain this? It's a knife fight. Big blade, butterfly knife. Somebody sees this, they'll wonder how come I got off this easy—or they'll notice that this isn't a defensive wound. I didn't get this from behind. I got this from tackling three guys at once."

MJ winced. "Do you have to… get so up close and personal?"

"I don't exactly have any distance weapons. I have my fists… I have to get in close. And when I'm jumping, which is the best way for me to get places, I can't redirect till I hit the ground again. And this guy just got lucky, that's all. And I was able to block, so it was just a glancing hit."

It was too much empty reassurance. MJ gritted her teeth, finishing the stitches. They were a little uneven, but it looked clean and neat. "There. Probably no scarring," she said, examining the exposed stretch of May's stomach and all the other old scars down the length of it. Most of them were from before, from hell. MJ wasn't sure how that worked, exactly. It had been a spiritual place, a place where you could get your head cut off and regrow your body, but it had also been translated somehow into the physical.

May pulled her shirt back down, tucking it into her jeans. She rolled her head from one side to the other, grinning at her mother. "Don't get so worked up. I heard on the streets that dad fought a supervillain the other day—left him webbed up for the police, as usual."

It took a second for this to percolate in. So he fought a criminal—wasn't that normal? But he had ended the fight without killing. His moral center was more or less intact.

May crossed her arms, moving to the window and leaning against the wall, looking outside. "So, how goes the battle plan?" she asked lightly. Just a hair too lightly. And her pose was just a bit too contrived. She was trying to set MJ at ease, trying to be gentle about the subject.

"It's a disaster," replied MJ, staying seated on the couch. "I'm not really a planner… and Harry's ideas are just terrible. He seems to think the best plan is to keep working on enhancing the goblin juice so we're stronger than anybody else, so we can protect Peter. But I've only been on it a little while, and I know this stuff isn't… it isn't good for you."

"Yeah."

They were both silent for a little bit. May watched the street below them, her expression not changing.

"I know what you're thinking," said MJ quietly.

"Do you?"

"I just kind of assumed leadership of our group… just because I think I'm the oldest, sanest one in the group. Just because I'm your mother, just because I don't trust Harry. And I told you I'd figure out what to do now… but I don't have a clue."

"I'm thinking maybe… maybe we need to look at things a little differently," said May quietly. "I've been fighting the little guys, he went out and fought the biggest one… but he and I, the one time we worked together, we did big things. Huge things."

MJ felt as if all her skin had been pulled tight. Goosebumps stood up on the back of her arms. "That's what I worry about," she whispered. "What if the devil let you come back here because it served his purposes? What if you and I make things worse?"

"We can't worry about that, mom," said May. Her voice was almost strident, and those dark eyes flashed. "If we overthink the consequences, we'll never do the right thing. Catch-22. We need to worry about doing the right thing starting with the small things we can do—that's why I go out and fight crime every night. That's why we meet with him in the day time. When the big thing comes along, when we can see it clearly, we'll do that. In the meantime, we do what we can."

It was a nice little speech. Maybe just a tad prepared, but that was May; she thought about those things, about what was right. About the best uses for her power.

MJ looked at May, and thought about it for a minute. "You know, maybe we were going about it the wrong way," she said quietly. "Recruiting a supervillain… that was stupid. That was wrong. We need to be better, not worse, if we're going to succeed. You're absolutely right."

2.

That night, MJ went with Harry to go find another supervillain they could try to work with.

She knew now that she needed to keep May pure and uncorrupted. May had great potential in her, despite all her time in hell. She could be a hero.

MJ needed extra help, strategic help. Somebody who could chart a course for them. She needed somebody used to thinking outside the box, somebody who could break rules without a second thought. She needed a villain.

But she needed to keep May away from it.

It added another level to her already precarious house of cards. Now she was keeping secrets from May, the one person she trusted in this crazy world. The one person who had been in hell, who had seen the truth behind the comfortable gauze of reality.

And Harry? She was positive now that he was taking the goblin serum again. He was moving too fast, jumping too high. She was having trouble keeping up with him.

But she could use him.

She felt guilty. She knew she was doing this wrong, by any standard. She wasn't being a hero. She was hanging out with villains and making plans to confound the heroes.

But this was bigger than the heroes. This was bigger than the villains.

And if she was perfectly honest with herself, she wasn't doing it for Peter. She had no real memory of ever being in love with him. No real ties to him. It was a plan to rescue him, sure, but it wasn't for him.

It was for May.

For May, she could do anything.

"I found a new glider," said Harry.

"Do I even want to know?" asked MJ, carefully checking the street below them. Harry stood on the edge of the roof, unconcerned by the prospect of falling.

"I raided the Avengers warehouse, locally, stole a bunch of my dad's stuff. Stole some neat tools, too. How would you like a fake Thor's hammer?"

"Say what?"

"Part of a whole cloning thing. I dunno. But it hits pretty hard—apparently there's something mystical to it."

She considered that for a moment. Would a mystical weapon do better against demons? "Maybe. I'll need to test it."

"Fair enough. Now, our mark is strictly small-time. Not even worth the time I'd spend on him, frankly, but he's got connections that go way back with our boy Peter." There was still an unhealthy tilt to the way he said 'our boy.' MJ ignored it.

No cop cars. No bystanders. Nobody to see whatever they did next—and five stories down to the ground. "Is that him leaving now?" she asked, focusing on the man leaving the diner.

"Yep," replied Harry, jumping the edge, falling straight down to land in the middle of the street. Showy, hard on your knees, totally unnecessary. MJ backed up a step, getting a running start, and jumped out, leaping all the way across the street to hit the opposite wall.

It was a little like flying. It was terrifying.

She hit the wall hard, redirecting, jumping down and sideways. She hit the ground and tucked into a roll, coming up on her feet.

Hours of practicing with May were starting to pay off.

They were on either side of the big man, surrounding him. Trapping him. He didn't look entirely worried, even giving both of them a tight little smile, as if to let them know he wasn't freaked out, wasn't afraid. "And what, exactly, do you kids want?" he asked.

"You're the Sandman, right?" asked MJ. "Flint Marko?"

He shrugged. "Everybody knows me, babe. Who're you?"

"We have a business proposition for you," said Harry. His voice was cool.

"You guys must be part of Norman Osborn's crew, right? No deal. Get lost… before I make you." He backed away a little bit, though, glancing around.

He was a rough-looking character, wide and blocky. He looked like a bruiser. MJ focused on his eyes, trying to get a read on him. "No, we're just… trying to do some things."

"You used to fight Spider-man, back in the day, but at least once you teamed up with him," said Harry.

Now his eyes narrowed, and Flint carefully set his feet apart, a wide stance. A fighting stance. "Is this about the fight we had? Is that what this is? I told them, I'll tell you, I'm not going up against the Spider again. Not until… well, maybe never. I'll fight gods, I'll fight Norman Osborn, whatever. I will not go near the Spider. Is this too close to his town? Because I can leave."

Harry seemed puzzled, moving closer. "I thought you could take him."

"Dude has gone nuts," muttered Marko. "I mean, I've flip-flopped across both sides of the line… good, bad, I'm the guy who can turn to sand, right? I fought with the Avengers, I've teamed up with dudes so bad they make you two look like girl scouts. But the Spider going rotten? That's bad news."

"Glad to hear you say it."

MJ's blood turned to ice water. That voice—so cold!—came from above them, from the front of the building. And she knew what she'd see if she turned to look, but she couldn't help it.

He was there, dressed all in primary colors, hanging effortlessly from the vertical face of the building.

Flint flinched. "Ah, geez. Not again. I'm not with them—!"

"You can leave, Flint," said Peter, his voice so cold it could have turned water to ice.

Flint broke apart, flowing like water. Grainy, a wave, just blowing away.

Peter dropped to the street, landing lightly, so effortlessly. Everything he did was effortless. He flowed as smoothly as the Sandman through this world, as if he weighed nothing. As if he were just a sprite, a will of the wisp. A trickster.

But MJ knew how hard he could hit. She'd felt his fists, and knew that he could go blow for blow with gods.

"Scooping up more villains, huh?" he asked. No wit, no preamble, no games. This was all Spider, no Man at all.

"We're trying to keep tabs on the major threats, yes," said MJ, refusing to give ground to him. She didn't step back. She didn't back down at all. She kept her chin high. Was she a villain now? She was whatever she had to be to keep May safe. "And maybe hire him, yes. If we could. Make sure he's not going to be—"

"Shut up!" snarled Peter. "I see you're both decked out in full super-villain gear."

Harry shifted from foot to foot, but said nothing.

Peter stalked forward, closer. "And where's May?" he demanded. "You left her alone somewhere? Sent her out somewhere alone?"

"She's patrolling the city," said MJ. "I asked her to check Hell's Kitchen tonight… to keep her as far from here as possible."

"Peter," said Harry, very, very softly.

Peter ignored him. "You two are getting on my last nerve here."

MJ tried not to laugh. This was serious. Even if he was being outrageously unfair, it was serious. Even if his tone reminded her that he no longer held all the cards, it was serious. Even if he was self-destructing… it was deadly serious.

"You remember what I told you, Peter?" she asked. "About Hell? About conspiracies? Things are moving very fast now. And soon you'll be facing a lot more… and you'd begrudge me my little conspiracy? I'm on your side. We threw down on your side, last time things got bad."

"You're not on my side," he snarled.

She shrugged. "I can only say it so many different ways. Believe it, don't believe it, whatever."

"Peter," said Harry, not so softly.

"What, Harry?" demanded Peter.

Harry was grinning ear to ear. Even under the ski mask it was terribly obvious. "You think I'm in this because you're going off the deep end? Ha-ha. You killed my dad, Peter. You killed him! Even if it never happened… even if I can't die."

"This is your solution? Dope Harry up and bring him out?" asked Peter.

MJ moved between the two men quickly. "Stop it, Peter."

Harry grabbed MJ's shoulder, shoving her out of the way. "But that's not the best part, is it. You killed him… and you don't even feel guilty. You killed him… and you'd do it again. That's what happened the other day, on TV, isn't it? You had him, and you were going to kill him… until your daughter stopped him. Until your little girl made you stop. You think I wasn't watching that? You think I didn't see what you almost did to my dad? My…dad!"

Peter tilted his head. "You want to pick a fight, Harry?" he asked. And his voice was like something from the grave, cold, inhuman. Wrong.

Harry leaned closer to Peter. "Who, me? Fight with you? Gee, wouldn't you just run me through with a rusty spear, Pete? Wouldn't you just kill me? Wouldn't you just cut my head off and wave it in my dad's face? Bad news, buddy. Dad doesn't care about me. He never did. So you'll just have to find some other way to cut his heart out… maybe try a sharper weapon this time, huh, Pete?"

Peter lashed out, hitting Harry so hard it took him off his feet, knocking him backwards into the wall. The impact was so hard MJ could almost feel a shock wave. Bricks fell down, shattered, clattering to the ground.

And Harry just laughed. A broken, hoarse laugh. "Is that all you have, Peter? Is that all?" he asked. There was something desperate in his voice.

Peter started towards him, and MJ couldn't help it. She knew Harry was unhinged, but that was the point of keeping him close, to watch him, to guard him, to try to keep him from losing any more of his mind. That was what she was doing. And she couldn't just stand there and let Peter take out his anger on Harry. It would drive Harry over the edge, it would make him truly hate Peter.

She reached for Peter, and he dodged fluidly under her hand. She didn't try to hit him; she hoped he could tell the difference between a grab and a blow, even though neither connected. "Stop it, Peter! So he's angry, so what? Are you going to beat him, beat Harry? He was your friend, Peter!"

"Stop saying my name!" It was more growl than she thought he had in him. "You—you just don't get it, do you? You come around here and you change things and you won't ever—not even once—do things the easy way!" He pushed past her, stalking towards Harry.

MJ didn't think; she moved. As fast as she could, entirely on instinct. He dodged, again, but this blow clipped him, knocking him off balance, and the next blow hit him solidly in the side of the head, sending him head-over-teakettle sprawling.

"You're supposed to be the HERO!" Now she was angry, and she couldn't contain it. How did he affect her like this? How did he make her insides growl and howl? She was angry and sad and above it all she remembered him being nice and sweet and gentle, and now he was none of those things. Now he was dark and empty and angry.

And she hated it.

She stalked forward. "The hero, Peter! The hero! The one who does the right thing—the one who saves them all! Only you aren't saving anybody now, are you? You're hurting people—and Harry's going to go right off the deep end soon, and what are you doing to stop it? Nothing! You push him further! God!"

He spun up onto his feet, every inch of him moving like a bullwhip, cracking and twisting. And he hit her, full in the face, with all his force, with all that incredible strength.

It was an explosion of light, and then she was slamming into the ground, sliding across it. She could taste blood in her mouth, disgusting and vile and somehow so sweet.

She coughed and thrashed and tried to get up. To her surprise it worked, and she was able to climb up to her feet. The goblin serum still in her gave her resilience, not just strength, the ability to get up and go on after being hit like that.

Harry was up now, but he was moving slow. Too slow. And staggering.

If MJ could take a hit like that, why couldn't he?

It dawned on her just as Peter turned to hit Harry.

Harry hadn't been taking any goblin serum. He was as clean as he'd claimed. All the things he could still do were just residuals—left over from when he had been dosing up. If he hadn't taken any serums, Peter might kill him by throwing a punch.

And if Peter killed Harry… well, that would be the even that drove him over the edge.

MJ didn't stop to think then. She knew what to do, how to do it. She had to protect Harry, who was being stupid and putting himself in harm's way now. She had to protect Peter, who thought, as she did, that Harry was juiced up far enough to take anything Peter could dish out.

She was too far away, so she stepped to the side, grabbing the car right there. She pulled on the door-handle as hard she could, leaning away, bracing her feet.

The door was fastened too securely; the door handle tore apart in her hand, and she stumbled away from the car.

It was enough. She threw it as hard as she could, overhand, like a baseball. She'd played as a kid, softball, and she'd never been great at it. But she didn't have to be great. She just had to buy some time.

Peter dodged, of course, ducking under the throw. But that distracted him from Harry, and he turned to look at her with those big empty white eyes.

"Harry's out of his mind, but I'm the one you need to pay attention to," she said, striding forward. She let all of her anger show, now, trying not to let her fear show as well. She walked right up to him.

He didn't move, standing there stock-still, rigid, the very image of defiance made flesh.

She put her nose right in his face, but didn't try to hit him. She pitched her voice low, so the fear wouldn't make it squeak. "Harry hasn't touched the goblin poison. Not in a long time. But that wouldn't stop you. You were about to lay into him, a normal man, an ordinary man. And what chance would he stand then? I don't know what you think you are, Peter Parker; but you're not the hero you think you are.

"As far as I'm concerned, you're the villain. You're the bad guy, the one who hurts people. And I'm here to stop you."

She hoped it didn't sound like just another villain ranting about their crazy ideas and how she'd get him and his little dog too. She hoped he heard the desperation in her voice.

He barely crouched at all, and then he was springing, flying high through the air. Impossibly high. And he kicked off against the wall, flying even higher. Never stopping, just vanishing into the night.

She turned to Harry, who was staring blankly at her. "Wow," he said. "I've never seen anybody out-self-righteous Pete before."

"I died and went to hell; and I'll be double-damned before I'll let him be the devil's plaything," snarled MJ.

But she was really just thinking about May again.


	14. Chapter 14

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

As soon as they were back at Harry's apartment MJ laid into him. "You made me think you were on the goblin serum, Harry!" she snarled.

"I told you I couldn't take any more!" he snapped right back, not skipping a beat. "You just thought I was stupid, is all! And you think I'm going crazy."

"You nearly committed suicide by Spider out there!"

He shrugged. "I can't run from Peter any more. It's… it's like destiny! He and I… I was dead, you said. Now I'm alive so I can finally have that argument with him. So I can finish that argument. So we can have it out like men."

"Like men," she said, the level of testosterone-poisoned stupid in the room surprising her, for some reason. "For your dad, who isn't dead any more."

Harry ran a hand through his hair. "You don't know what it's like to be me. To have… memories. Things that weren't. Aren't. Reality seems to fracture…"

"Screw you. I can almost remember Peter marrying me; being pregnant with his child. Reality folded, Harry! It folded, hard! It changed! But it's not destiny or fate that wants you to fight Peter, it's the frickin` devil!"

He laughed, waving a hand at her. "It's not that serious, MJ. I mean, I was dead, now I live. Like I'm some kind of Jesus. What do you think of that?"

She slapped him, hard enough to spin him around and knock him to the ground.

Time stood still for a second. He was on the ground, groaning. He was hurt… she had hurt him.

She wondered if this was what it felt like to be Peter, only all the time. She knelt down beside Harry, taking his hand in both of hers. "Harry? Harry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He tried to pull his hand free, groaning and clutching at his face. "Geez, you hit as hard as Peter."

"I know. I know. I just… Harry, you can't… you can't…

He rolled away from her, getting up slowly. She stayed crouched down, staring at him.

There was only the tiniest of noises to let her know that they weren't alone.

May was outside the window, watching them. Wearing that costume, a cheap version of Peter's costume. Those big, blank eyes just staring. And how long had she been there? Had she been following them? Had she seen the fight with Peter?

After all the work MJ had done to try and make May feel safe, feel like they were working together, as a family, had she destroyed that carelessly, with one bad decision?

She stood up slowly, walking to the window. May slid it open with one careless, graceful tug, with strength that was native to her, something she had grown up with. So different than MJ's goblin-powered strength, so ugly and alien.

"Been there long?" asked MJ, her voice sounding strained in her ears.

May climbed through the window, moving in every way like a spider. A freakish, limb-wriggling movement. She stayed hanging off the wall, as if that was as normal as standing. And maybe it was, for her.

"Did you think I wasn't watching you, mommy?" she asked. Her voice was painfully small. Afraid.

"I hoped," said MJ.

May dropped to the floor, looking over at Harry. "You're not, you know."

"What?" He sounded petulant and childish.

"Jesus. You're the devil's kid, not god's kid. You're the opposite. You're back to cause chaos… not good things."

Harry's face was pale to begin with. Somehow he still managed to lose color. His scowl formed slowly, tectonically. Anger that had been barely there when goading Peter came to the front. "Shut up, kid."

May didn't. May wouldn't. "You want to be your own man, don't you? But you don't know how. And there is a way, you know. One way. But you won't do it… Because it's easier to hit the Spider than to face the Man. And mom's the same way. You're both doing this thing, and it gets bigger and worse… and I've done my thing, and I've done it all over. And I'm not… I don't hate you. At all. But I can't do this your way."

"May…" MJ moved closer, trying to put a hand on May's shoulder. May pulled back, twisting away.

"I thought you two understood the way this is. I thought you understood better than he does. Because he was making it worse, and I was going to save him, going to save everybody. Because that's what you taught me. But you're both making it worse now… And do you even see it, mom? Do you? You're scarier than him now!"

She stepped back, hopping up into the window frame. MJ's hands were shaking, and she felt so cold. "May, don't run off…"

May shook her head. "I've gotta think about this. You guys aren't going to change… how can I fix this?"

2.

MJ spent the rest of the week in the library, reading.

Reading about heroes. Reading about villains. Reading about who had killed who. About which heroes were gray. Who she could find to talk morality with her little girl.

And there was nobody.

Even guys like Captain America weren't as squeaky-clean as she had remembered. He'd started out as a solider, after all. And while some of them had started pretty clean, it seemed that darkness had been infecting them. They were willing to kill, when they deemed it necessary, and didn't even seem to go out of their way to hide it.

The world was a lot darker than she remembered it.

Was that them? Was the devil winning, because of the deal they had made?

She read about wars. She read about aliens. She read about crisis after crisis.

She read till she thought her eyes would bleed.

When she finally left the library she went looking for Peter.

3.

He was hard to find. As far as she could tell he didn't have a job, and was living on unemployment. And living on Flash Thompson's couch.

Finding that out required talking to Peter's new friends, who all seemed to be women. This was just a little bit strange. They all gave MJ odd looks.

"Hey, Pete," she said, knocking on the door. "I know you're in there. I can feel it, this close. I wanna talk."

He opened the door very slowly. "How did you find me?"

She shrugged. "You told Carlie where to find you. Told her I was an old friend. Can I come in?"

He glanced back over his shoulder. "Uh… no fights. I just got this place cleaned up."

"Yeah, sure. No fights. Flash around?" For some reason it didn't seem right that Peter and Flash were friends. Probably just memories of high school, where they'd hated each other. But given how many of MJ's memories had been completely torn apart by the devil, this put her on edge, and she wasn't sure if perhaps the devil had worked in some more evil here.

"Nah. He's off doing work for the military—I'm housesitting for him. Feeding his cat and stuff. Come on in." He sounded terribly reluctant to let her in.

He directed her to the couch, which was old and stained, but remarkably comfortable. She sat as far away from him as she could, remembering how hard he could hit, how many times he'd hit her since she came back from hell.

He looked at her, and there was something flat and empty about that gaze. A complete lack of love.

And she knew that as far as he was concerned, they had been over for a long time. That was still her dominating memory of him, too; of leaving him, of years apart.

But she could remember seeing love in those eyes. Devotion. Dedication. She could remember it, and it scared her that it was gone now.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asked. He was leaning back, ankle resting on knee, looking for all the world like a younger Norman Osborn.

She shivered. "I've been reading up. Trying to get a handle with what's going on in the world."

He laughed. "Oh, you're looking at the world?"

"I'm—it's complicated, you know?"

"Please. Complicated. Like you've had to face what I have…"

"Peter… No, you're right. You've been dealing with a double life since you were just a kid, haven't you?"

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Yeah… how exactly did you work all this out, anyway? I mean, I sorta believe you about alternate realities and hell and what-not… but…"

"Believe it all, Peter. I knew you—not just the outside, what you leave obvious, but the bits you hide. I know that you would rather solve a problem than pound somebody's face… but it's the face-pounding that wins, every time, isn't it? Look, the whole world, it's involved in this. In this great big thing. A plot, a plan, a villain."

He rolled his eyes. "You were on about this before…"

"Yeah. Prove me wrong, Peter. You used to be all about the ideas… a regular little mini-scientist. You can be brilliant. Prove there's not some hand driving every little thing in your life. Prove there isn't somebody manipulating you into a position where you have to fight every single hero."

"I'm on good terms with the New Avengers."

"And they're borderline, at best. And in the fallout, when all's said and done, they'll turn on you. The minute you kill one of the big names. The minute you cross the line."

"I haven't killed anybody."

"But you will, Peter. And that… Ugh. I'm sorry. I'm preaching at you again." She took a moment to collect her thoughts. "This is going to sound like the biggest hypocrisy of all, because I'm back from the dead, but look at your enemies. Look at the ones who came back from the dead. Those are the ones that are being put in a place to drive you mad. Not just kill you; literally drive you mad. That's the end-game. And don't tell me you didn't feel it when you were fighting Osborn's Avengers. They sent two men with powers like gods after you… Norman Osborn, in a super-suit… a fake Spider-man, a fake Wolverine… who was that other guy? In purple?"

He shrugged. "Not important."

"The point is, you were outgunned. And you could have made it easier on yourself… if you killed one. Then two. Then three."

"I thought you were trying to—to talk me down from killing." There was a gleam in his eye now. He was listening.

He could be smart. He could be the smartest man on earth, sometimes. If he just stopped and thought.

"That's what they want," she said, trying to fight the urge to whisper it dramatically. She couldn't help her voice dropping a little, though. "They want you to kill."

"We've been over this."

"But you don't really believe me."

He sighed, rubbing his face. "Dammit, why would I ever be stupid enough to make a deal with the devil? I'm not that guy. I know what he is, what he stands for, what he wants. I wouldn't! And he couldn't just cloud my mind and make it happen, because there are rules, aren't there? I have to walk in eyes-open… that's what people like Strange say. So why would I?"

"I have an idea," said MJ, trying to keep her voice level. "A memory. Just a niggling one… a funeral. May's funeral. Do you remember that, Peter?"

He let out a long, slow breath of air. "Not… not even for her."

But he didn't sound sure of himself any more.

"I want to help you, Peter," she said.

And she looked at him, really looked at him. As deep and hard as she could.

Under that hard surface he was still under there. The lost little boy who had thrown away his Uncle, not ever realizing what he was doing. The boy who still went out, still fought monsters in the night. Not because he had to, not because he was paid to, but because he knew it was the right thing to do. Because he had the power to save the world, and wasn't going to sit idly by and let others die while he could save them.

"I can't accept I'd do this," he said. "I still just can't…"

"Then think of him as somebody who wasn't you. Somebody who was like you, but in a different world. Back against the wall, facing the unthinkable. Somebody who had lost Harry, somebody who was close to losing May… somebody who had already lost his daughter, whether he realized it or not. Everything! Think of him as the other Peter."

He exhaled slowly. "I can't… I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do about this, even knowing it's true. I've tried—god knows I've tried!—to make things right wherever I go. But they get worse. And if I don't do something… permanent… about Osborn… he'll have it all."

She took a deep breath. "I… I know I just make things worse. That's why I'm here. That's why he sent me here. The devil. I know it wasn't because I fought my way out of hell—that's just what he wanted me to believe. But the crappy thing of it is… I knew it when I took the deal. My deal wasn't just to come back to life. I wouldn't have done it for me—God knows I spent too long around you to walk into a deal like that. May, Peter! Our daughter. She was… she doesn't really exist in this reality. What we did cut her out of the world. Destroyed her. She was trapped, in hell. Serving the devil. I had to bring her here. I had to save her. And the thing of it is… if I lose you, the devil takes her back to hell."

His face hardened. "May…"

MJ pushed on. "I can't save her. Not without saving you. And, frankly, the devil didn't want me to save you; just to keep you alive. Which we did. You might have died at Norman Osborn's hands if we weren't here. And now…"

Peter closed his eyes, leaning back into the couch. "Gah. This is all…"

"Say crazy, and I'll hit you!" she said, smiling a little bit.

He smiled. Apparently that memory, their long discussions about feminism and 'hysteria' and 'crazy' and other loaded words was something he remembered. Something from their time together, before that crazy memory that might have been a breakup or might have been a wedding, stuck sideways in her mind.

"I don't know what to do," he said, meeting her gaze. "All I know is that I have a daughter out there… and I can't keep myself safe. How do I keep her safe?"

MJ smiled, the hardest smile of her life. "She's more than just a damsel in distress, Peter. She went through hell, but it couldn't take it away from her. That piece of her that's… that's a hero. That's a little bit more. That wants to protect the innocent. She's not—she's not the one you need to worry about!"

He raised one eyebrow slightly, and she laughed at herself. "No, it hasn't stopped me from worrying either. But how could I ask her to do otherwise? All she knows of you, all she's known since she could know, is that you were so good, you did so much good, that the devil himself has been trying to turn you against humanity. Trying to take away your heroism. Because you are saving the world, making it better, every day."

Peter sighed, and seemed to deflate a little. He'd been holding himself rigid, stiff, upright. Now he leaned back against the couch, finally taking his eyes off her, looking forward, at the coffee table. There, among assorted debris, was a picture of his aunt and uncle, young and happy. His focal point at times like these.

"I feel like the world is coming unraveled," he said softly. "I was always able to turn to Aunt May, times like these. But now I can't. And…"

It was right there, in that moment, that the idea came to her that she should kiss him. A wild impulse, one that she had never even thought about before coming here. When she had thought about coming here she had been terrified, remembering his sneers, his fists, the way he had hit her before.

She leaned in and kissed him quickly, before she could stop to think about it.

He wasn't surprised. He had that sense when somebody was attacking him, a sense that allowed him to avoid danger, and even though she moved towards him quickly, he knew it wasn't hostile, knew it wasn't to hurt him.

Her kiss was quick, a touch and then a quick retreat. But he leaned towards her, raising one hand. He placed it on her shoulder, not grabbing, just a touch. Gentle, calm. And he stopped there, an inch from her face, both of them leaning into one another.

She'd forgotten how gentle he could be. How his hands, so powerful, could be so featherlight. A hand with the power to break a man's spine in one twist. A hand with the power to destroy. And there it was, soft and gentle. There was the core of the man she had forgotten.

He just stared into her eyes, taken aback. "Are you… are you sure you want to…? Is that why you…?"

She licked her lips. "I'm not… no. I didn't come here for that. It would probably be a mistake."

He started to move back away from her before she had even finished saying it, and she had to grab his hand. Stop his retreat. "I didn't come here because of that. I didn't come here because I wanted you, or needed you. I came here because I wanted to talk to you." She could feel his muscles tighten in his wrist. Powerful, lithe muscles. "I kissed you because you looked adorable for a second there."

He laughed, leaning back, but kept his hand intertwined with hers. "You say we were married in this alternate world."

She twisted her hand slightly, letting the tips of her fingers drift up his wrist. He was still wearing his webshooters, and she knew that where they had been digging into his wrist it would be sensitive to the touch. She kept her touch light, ethereal. "I can hardly remember any of it. I remember being happy. I remember being on the run with you, with all the government after you, and thinking… thinking I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't know how we lost that… but I'm sorry."

He stared at her, and she could see the thoughts clicking by behind his eyes. And he didn't say anything, but his fingers curled, tightening around her hand. A gentle squeeze. And even if his hands couldn't have bent steel with that grip, there was something in the way he was so gentle, something she loved. He had never treated her as if she were fragile, but he had always been so careful, so gentle.

It was a bit awkward, leaning over, putting her head on his shoulder. Cuddling against him. He was still mostly a stranger to her. But it felt right, as if they were falling into a pattern from long ago.

His breath hitched. "Jesus," he whispered.

"Déjà vu?" she asked.

He put a hand on her shoulder, holding her. "You probably… you probably don't know, but I just learned that there's a major push going on soon. Military types hunting me. And May-day."

She tilted her head to the side. "May-day?"

"It… it was getting confusing trying to keep May and Aunt May straight. In my head. So I gave her a nickname. It seemed… right."

She chuckled. "Yes, it does."

"And I don't know what I'm going to do about it…"

"Peter…"

"No, don't. Don't tell me you'll fight for me. Because that scares me. It scares me that I want to trust you. It scares me that I can't trust you. It scares me that I still feel for you… I don't… this, right here, what we're doing, I'm not really sure what it is. It's… it's an awful lot like you're a stranger. But you're not. You're MJ. And we used to be… we used to have this. And it was good. But I'm not sure if I can trust you, not sure if I can trust myself around you. And I'd like… I'd very much like to sleep with you. That's never changed. You have always… you are amazing. You know that, right? But I'm not sure it would be right, I'm not sure it would work… and that scares me too."

She leaned in a little closer, kissing the side of his neck. "That's sweet of you to say."

"It's true."

"I know. But you didn't have to say it; you could have just said that part about being scared. You always did talk too much… because you never could hide what was inside of you." She wrapped both arms around him, tight as she could, and squeezed. "And that, more than anything else, I loved about you. No, listen, Harry is going off the rails. He isn't taking goblin juice. I'm juiced up… but it's been making me… it does stuff to me. May is the one who's sane and balanced, and she's also the one who's been to hell and back. Literally."

His hand slid down her arm, over her hip, hesitating on her knee before he let go, reaching forward and scooping up a sheet of paper off the crowded coffee table. "I did some digging into the goblin juice. I never had a sample of it—the best I got was a tissue sample from one of the Hobgoblins. I'm not even sure which one it was. But they were using the same formula, and I tried analyzing it, trying to figure out what it does. I cross-matched it with my own blood, but that's a little weird anyway. There's some similarities, which is unexpected, but not a lot. I wish I had a sample of Steve Rogers blood to type this against. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is I think I might be able to come up with a drug cocktail that'll help allay the side effects of the serum. I hope."

He offered her the piece of paper. It had scribblings and writings that were so much nonsense to her, but his face was screwed up in sincerity.

She took the paper, and tried not to let herself hope that this was a victory. "Thank you, Peter."

He hesitated, his hand still halfway outstretched. "This is… you make me feel… I was afraid, before, you know. Afraid you'd just waltz in and make me feel like this and use it against me, put me off balance and then do some kind of devil-type mojo. I don't want to be right about that. I don't want to think that badly of you."

It broke her heart a little bit to know that she could be that person, could be what he feared. She knew that she would have done just that in a minute, if she'd thought it would work.

She moved closer, then, climbing on top of him. Consequences swirled in her mind's eye, but she suddenly couldn't care. He was surprised, but he didn't draw back or try to stop her, and this time when they kissed it was deeper, passionate.

He wrapped one arm around her waist, but broke off the kiss. "What happened to not being sure?" he asked.

She slid one hand under his shirt, over tight muscles. "Maybe it is a bad idea." She dropped her voice down to a whisper. "But I've missed you, and I've been to hell and back, literally, and I'm really afraid that every day I wake up to will be my last, that I'll lose, that I'll end up back in hell… and maybe it's just nostalgia, but you've always been… a day with you, that would always be… that's what I would wish for. That's what I would want."

And she kissed him again. And his body, powerful, lithe, able to deal out destruction like few others, able to do almost anything, just melted at her touch.

And for a while she forgot that he had changed, that he was different. Because he was everything good that she remembered about him.


	15. Chapter 15

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

MJ woke up first. Maybe because Peter had been all out lately, and was exhausted. Maybe because her time in hell had left her a light sleeper.

They were on the floor, having ended up there somehow from the couch. His body was warm, warmed than she remembered, his other-worldly metabolism always keeping him warm.

She sat up, and he stirred, eyes peeking open.

"Hey," she said, struggling to think of something to say.

He grinned nervously at her. "Regretting this that much, huh? Already?"

He always reverted to a more childlike self at times like this. Insecure. Joking. She preferred that Peter.

She grabbed her shirt, slipping it on. "No. Thinking about what you said before, about a push to get you and Mayday-"

He smiled. "Nickname's sticking, huh?"

"It feels like a keeper. I just… the sum total of ass-kicking I've done has been facing you, you know? But I feel like… I've got this stuff in me now, and I can help. So shouldn't I?"

He took a deep breath. "How? I mean, no offense, but when this goes down, it sounds like they'll be trying harder to keep it on the down-low. Snipers, black-ops teams. I don't know if I'm up for it—and like you said, you haven't done this before."

She grinned at him, searching for her pants. How far could they have gotten, anyway? "Well, I'm fairly confident in my ability to learn. I ever tell you about my first acting gig? Of course I did. They wanted me to do things I had no idea how to do, and I lied my butt off about what I could do. Martial arts training—ha! And then there I was, taking three different classes at night to catch up, and all to play a bit role that got killed in the same episode she appeared on. Still, it was TV, it wasn't a toothless victim role, and I got to meet awesome folks…"

He smiled at her. "Meaning you'll figure it out." Somehow he had found his pants without moving. Unfair. He rolled them on, then tossed her underpants at her.

She snorted. "Meaning I'll figure something out, sure. I'll play catch-up if I have to, I'll do it without any idea what I'm doing if it comes to that—you were just a teenager when you started, and you'd never done anything like this. Don't give me any hypocritical crap about this."

"If I met the younger me now, I'd sit him down and try to teach him better. I had no idea." Peter ducked down, peering under the couch. "Huh. I have no idea how Flash got his hands on one of those… anyway, here's your pants."

She slid them on and moved towards the door. "Listen, I have to jet; I have stuff up in the air."

He nodded, glancing at his watch. "And I have work… and I have _work_…"

She took a deep breath. "So, we're okay, right?"

He blinked a few times. "How do you mean?"

"We're on the same page and we're going to try to work together and you're not going to fly off the handle and try to fight Norman Osborn alone… right?"

He chuckled. "I think so, yeah. Okay."

2.

Harry was waiting for her in the back room of his coffee shop. His dad was there too.

His dad.

Was there.

"Ah, Miss Watson!" he said, turning to her slowly with that smile.

That.

Smile.

He was like an older version of Harry. Beefier. More muscle. And you could tell it was all muscle, not fat. He moved smoothly, gracefully. And there was something in his eyes, something crazy.

What were the people of this world thinking, giving him power? Sure, yes, he could beat an alien invasion. Because he was crazy and super-powerful and dangerously violent. If you kept him in a cage, on a leash, it might work.

What was this? Who would do this?

And it had all come down after the devil had made a deal.

With MJ.

This was her fault.

Her stomach twisted tight, and she just gaped at him. The door swung closed, bumping into her, but it was nothing. She just stared at him.

"I understand that it was you who took on my identity and took to the skies," he said, in a tone that was friendly and with a slight scowl that screamed violence.

She looked to Harry, feeling betrayed. Harry shrugged. "Not much point denying it, not when he already pieced it all together."

"I just want to know where you got the female spider. Was she one of the clones, somehow turned female? That would be ironic. Or is she like the Spider-Woman, actually completely unrelated to him? That would also be funny."

MJ's hands balled into fists without her even thinking about them. "What do you want, Norman?"

He chuckled, looking away. "You know, that's an interesting question. I've not been well, you know. My obsession with the Spider nearly destroyed me once. Did destroy me. Had I been willing to forget about him, I might have been able to do more. And now… now, I could really do much more. I'm in a position to be… well, you know. Top dog. What I always believed I could be." He took a step closer to her, skewered her with that red-hot gaze. "If I could just… leave… the spider… alone."

She took a deep breath. "Norman…"

"I used to know who he was. I'm pretty sure. I have notes. It's not like I'm just some kind of moron. But things changed, and I lost that bit of power over him. And I have the world, right now! The world, my own super-team, even… Bob. And you know what? It's just not good enough. It's just… it's destiny. He isn't even trying to stand up to me, and yet I have a burning need to find him, to hunt him, to destroy him. Burning!"

He smiled again, deeper, and it was as if she was looking at Mephisto's smile again. She had met the devil, and this one human being shouldn't be able to channel so much of him, to contain so much evil.

Harry cleared his throat. "MJ…"

She didn't want to hear excuses from him, or why he was suddenly siding with his father. So she glared at him.

He met her gaze flatly, evenly. "MJ, dad is here with the Sentry. The guy who can just drop people dad doesn't like into the sun. _Be cool._"

Harry was being rational, and he hadn't betrayed her at all.

That was a relief.

MJ was sweating. A cold sweat.

She focused on Norman. "What do you want, Norman?"

He laughed. "I want a lot of things, kiddo. World peace! At least, world peace that I enforce. Spider-man's head on a spear. I know you know where he is. Are you going to lead me to him?"

She considered her options. She thought about Sentry, the man so powerful he could throw somebody else into the sun.

And she thought about Peter.

"How did a man like you get the world to trust him, Norman?" she asked softly. Calling up all her old acting skills. "How does a man like you function in this world?"

His face twisted with anger. "Girl…"

She sighed, pressing both hands flat against the door behind herself, to remind herself that she couldn't back away from him. "Okay, you want Peter? You honestly want him, want to kill him? So much that you'll throw away everything you have? Then… I have only one answer for you."

He moved fast. Like a giant cat, graceful and smooth, trying to yell out and call for backup. But she was fast too.

The door broke off easily, and aiming it at him was just like throwing a giant Frisbee. It caught him in the belly, center of mass, as he tried to dodge, taking his voice away, driving the breath out of him.

And she followed the door.

One quick blow to his head, knocking his headset off, trying to delay the inevitable backup. Another to his midsection. And he was a meta, possessing great strength, a healing factor. Extra-human abilities.

But she'd been given the same, now.

And if the only way to keep Peter and May safe was to kill… well, she'd crossed a lot of lines. And she knew the two of them had to stay pure, no matter what. That if they crossed the line, if they tried to kill him, it would darken them. They needed to be the kind of heroes who would never kill, the kind who always saw the goodness in villains, always tried to reform them.

It was that purity that made it possible for them to get up and continue fighting every day. That purity, that determination to never bend. It was what made them heroes.

If they came to same conclusion that she did, that Norman Osborn was a monster who needed to be killed before he remade the world in his own image, then they would do it.

They had the power.

She had to do it first.

He was surprised by her strength, but he also had more practice at this than she did. He twisted and lunged, sidestepping her attack and buying himself some time. He scooped up a chair and hurled it at her. The impact smashed the chair into splinters, driving her back against the wall.

She barely ducked in time to avoid a kick. He smashed a hole through the wall. "Backup!" he roared, getting his breath back. "Backup, now!"

She still had the knives. They came out, one in each fist, and she aimed for his stomach, angling upwards. Into his chest.

Aiming for his heart.

He blocked with one arm, managing to steer her aim down, into his belly. She stabbed as deep as she could, and the shock of impalement shook him loose. She aimed another shot for his heart.

Harry pulled Norman away from her. "Stop it!" he yelled.

And then the Avengers arrived, Norman's Avengers. And they gaped at her, as if seeing a woman in civilian dress somehow gut Norman Osborn was anything special. The one dressed as Wolverine was gaping, his jaw hanging open. The only one who didn't freeze was the God of War, Ares, who stormed forward at her.

For a split-second, time stood still.

She could see them all standing there in that doorway, Miss Marvel, Hawkeye, Wolverine, the Sentry, the black-suited Spiderman; Ares was halfway to her.

She adjusted her grip on the blood-soaked knives, stepping back and adopting a defensive stance. She was outclassed, outgunned, but she wouldn't go down easily. And Norman wasn't dead yet, and he had healed from a shot through the heart before. She needed to take his head off and probably burn the body to be sure of it.

Ares grinned at her as he closed. "I've much wanted to do that myself, these past few days. Well played, and I'll remember you fondly after I've killed you."

He had to slow down to give that little speech. Slowing down bought her time.

And not just her.

Harry let out a yell, and pulled an orange pumpkin bomb out of his father's pocket. "Nobody move!" he roared, pressing the grenade to his father's throat.

Ares stopped. The others, bemused, just looked.

"This is literally the best day we've ever had in this stupid job," said Ms. Marvel.

Hawkeye laughed. "I know, right? I've wanted to do that to him for a long, long time. Okay, kid, you have our attention. What now?"

Harry glanced to MJ. She was focused on Ares, waiting for him to move, but she spared a bit of attention for Harry, wondering exactly what he was planning to do.

He winked.

MJ moved them, as fast as she could, cutting Ares on the forearms, just above his bracers. He was surprised when the knives cut through his nigh-invulnerable flesh, but he really shouldn't have been. She'd had time to work out what manner of being he was, to work out that normal weapons were useless. She'd traded in the knives dipped in holy water for knives with a little bit more bite.

He didn't stop to scream. He was the God of War, after all. He was pure fury, pure rage, pure violence.

He tried to backhand her, but she moved under it, forward, slashing him across the back of the leg as she went by him. Trying to draw him away.

Then the one dressed as Hawkeye stepped forward, drawing the bowstring taut and aiming it at her face. "You're fast," he said. "But I've dropped fast metas before. I could literally do you and then the boy before that bomb has time to go off. Stop jumping around."

Harry cleared his throat. "Dad and I were just having a discussion with my friend here. Dad, could you tell your friends to wait outside?"

"Kill them!" hissed Norman.

Then things went to hell, so hard and so fast that MJ's breath was taken away.

Mayday arrived.

She moved like a bolt of lightning. The first strike knocked Bullseye down, but she was moving fast, so very fast, slamming him into a wall and then leaping. She fired webbing, great strands of it that wrapped around the others.

Ms. Marvel burned it away from herself, deadly energy flying off of her. But May was too busy, moving faster than MJ could follow, leaping, tumbling.

She hit Ares then, punching the God of War in the face. He was surprised by the assault, but he kept moving, trying to bring his weapons up, to aim them at her.

But she was faster than him, so much faster than him!

She kicked the guns out of his hands, jumping up, boxing his ears. He tried to swing at her but she swung again and again.

MJ faced the one calling herself Ms. Marvel. "Hey, look, don't do this," said MJ, trying to reach out, be reasonable. "You know he's a bad man."

Ms. Marvel laughed. "Yeah, and I've tried to be better—but there's a reason he chose us, you know?"

MJ punched her. With all the goblin strength, it was like she hadn't even swung. It was as if nothing had happened. Ms. Marvel was a brick wall, a solid, immovable force.

"Aw, super-strength run out on you?" mocked the tall blonde.

A thought niggled at MJ's ear.

A quiet, subtle thought.

May had used webbing.

May had no webbing.

Peter had the webbing.

MJ dove for the floor, tucking and rolling.

Peter made his entrance count, shooting balls of webbing in front of himself at the walls, shattering them. He exploded through the wall as if it were paper, leaping into the middle of the fray. The big fake Spider-man let out a roar, his mouth gaping open, huge and terrifying. Ares, still trying to fight May, instinctively ducked, retreating.

Harry had his father in a head-lock, and was still holding the grenade. "C'mon!" he screamed, and it was unclear if he was yelling that at Peter or the Avengers.

May kept moving, dancing through the room. Faster than Peter, she simply hit one, then the next, then the next. The Sentry was standing there frozen, looking confused. Looking angry.

Peter twisted and slammed his fist into the Wolverine, slamming him through the wall. He ducked under a lance of energy that blew away most of the wall behind him, firing another spurt of webbing onto Ms. Marvel, covering her face.

MJ tried to think. She tried very hard to think.

Peter had softened a little bit. He had let her in, even if only for a few hours. He had talked about making plans with her. He had given Mayday webs, something he had previously denied her.

And it only now sank in to MJ that this was worse than him being cold and distant. Because if he cared, and then they were taken away from him. If he cared about them, and Norman were to hurt and kill Harry, and MJ, and May…

That would be worse than being alone. Alone he might be dark and hopeless, might be turning to violence, but he wasn't unglued. Not yet.

And MJ thought back to the reasons the devil had sent her here. His claim that Peter was going to die, and he needed them to save him, to do something heroic. And she realized for the first time that it was just another lie.

What he needed to do was to remind Peter what he had lost, because Peter didn't remember. If he remembered MJ, remembered Mayday, and was given this one little chance to save them, and failed, that would turn him darker than being alone in this terrible world could ever turn him.

The devil had boxed MJ in, and now Norman Osborn, a man with not a little portion of the devil within him, was going to do something so awful that it would turn Peter into a force of evil.

And once he was evil, then he would finally cut loose. Then he would finally stop holding back. He had the strength to kill every villain here, if he was pushed into using lethal force. The strength to tears heads right off from bodies—and who here could stop him? The Sentry was nowhere in sight. And what would the Sentry do if Norman Osborn died, anyway? If Peter killed him, well and truly killed him?

Would he avenge Norman? Or would he fall in line with Peter? Would he serve Peter as he'd served Norman?

MJ snapped out of her reverie. Harry's hands were shaking, where he was holding his father. He was as conflicted as ever, still filled with anger and shame. Anger that might land on Peter or his father. Shame at betraying his father, even though his father was pure evil.

He was the one who would do something stupid.

MJ looked around, and saw the trap that the devil had put them in.

And she couldn't see any way out of it.


	16. Chapter 16

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

1.

She'd tried to change the game, tried to throw the devil off. Tried to do the unexpected. But every step of the way she'd been boxed in. Every step of the way she'd just done what he wanted. Did he have a master plan that allowed him to win no matter what she did? Or could he just predict her movements so well?

It didn't matter now.

Now she was here, surrounded by these evil Avengers, save for the most powerful of them.

Which was another question. Where was he?

Now she was here, and Harry was here, powerless, cannon fodder, just another person to die and drive Peter evil. She was here, and May was here, and Peter was here.

So many people that it would break Peter to watch die.

So MJ tallied up the bad guys again, looking around. Peter had punched Hawkeye, the fake evil Hawkeye who was really a villain, and hit him hard. He was down, and he wasn't getting up.

The evil Ms Marvel was webbed up, but she was already burning it off with her strange other-worldly energy.

May had the evil Wolverine on the ground; he had those deadly claws, but when he would reach for her she would dodge, too fast for him to hit, and hit him again. And his healing powers couldn't keep him ahead of all the damage she was doling out.

Peter was fighting the evil black-clad Spider-man, who was bigger and stronger than him. But he appeared to be winning somehow.

Ares had been smashed through the wall somewhere, and he wasn't coming back just yet. She suspected when he did come back he would be angrier.

Harry was holding his father, a chokehold around the neck, and pressing that pumpkin bomb into his face.

So MJ decided to do what you were never, ever supposed to do in a fight like this.

She strode over to Harry, taking the bomb out of his hand. She pushed Norman down to his knees with her own borrowed other-worldly strength, the Goblin serum in her pushing her towards frenzied, unwise action.

She looked down into the face of pure evil.

"You'd lose," she said, flatly, bluntly. "You see that, right? You'd lose bad, and there's no helping it. You can maybe kill one of us." She pressed the bomb against his right eye. "And the minute one of those two spiders is hurt, the minute I think this is going bad, I'm going to kill you. Maybe before. So why don't you have your men stand down? I'll make mine stand down. Why don't you and I finish this conversation like adults?"

He glowered at her. "And let you kill me at your leisure?"

She smiled. "A little truce isn't going to change your odds any. You and I, we know that. We're two of a kind, aren't we?"

"And you're in charge of your troops here?"

She thought about it. Wasn't she? Certainly neither Spider-man nor Spider-girl really understood the stakes she was playing for, not now. She had to be the one in charge. Neither of them were ready to play this game with Norman, the only game she had left.

So she grinned at him. "Goblin to Goblin, Norman. Isn't that the way it should be?"

He shivered. "And you dated my son, before all this? Oh, what might have been."

It could never have been. She hadn't been a monster before she went to hell. She'd come back wrong and twisted, darkened by her time there. She'd come back with all this inside of her. Darkness that she couldn't even have imagined before.

She was playing a game against the devil. And Norman might be the devil's most powerful piece, the devil's Queen on this chessboard… but MJ was playing the devil, not Norman. She had to look beyond it.

(Also, now she had to get the mental image of Norman dressed as a Queen out of her mind)

"Stand down," said Norman firmly.

"You heard him," said MJ, lowering the bomb, and pulling him to his feet. "We're done here."

Peter and May were surprised, but they complied. Jumping back, finding a place to stand where they could easily run for it or resume hostilities. Behind those masks their faces were unreadable, but neither said anything.

The false Avengers were eerily silent as well, except for the wet coughing noises Wolverine was making.

Norman was grinning broadly, believing that he was firmly in control now. "I think we all know I could change the balance of power here just by calling Bob in," he said.

"Where is your mighty man, anyway?" asked MJ. "Shouldn't you have sent him in first?"

Norman made a face. "Unfortunately, I am in charge of protecting this world, you know. And there is a situation—a minor alien invasion, nothing like the Skrulls—and I had to send Bob to take care of it first. Like I said, I am in charge of these things now."

This was a good sign, if he still had enough sanity to do his job before getting to the serious business of killing Peter. "Why don't you and I take a walk?"

The fake Spider-man growled. "No, no, no," he said, surging forward at Peter. "No words, no thoughts, none of this stupid-!"

The fake Ms Marvel blasted him, knocking him to the floor. Where she'd shot him the alien skin peeled back, away from the man underneath, shrieking and wiggling.

"Thank you," said Norman. "All right. You all stay here and keep an eye on the Spider-clan here. Mary Jane and I are going to take a quick walk, do some negotiating."

MJ tucked the goblin bomb into her pocket, glaring at Mayday. "Play nice with the other kids," she said.

Norman laughed, following her out the door. "I'm not sure exactly what you think you're doing—shouldn't you be fleeing while you have an edge?"

She kept walking at a sedate pace, heading downtown. "I know who wiped your memory of who he is."

Norman hurried to catch up, falling in step beside her. "Oh, really?"

"And I know why, Norman. And it's not to hurt him."

"Ah."

"It's to make him kill you. See, last time it wasn't his fault, was it? When you died. He got away with a clean conscience, after all the work that had gone into making him hate you. After all that. Do you remember what you did?"

"I remember a girl. His girl. Dying by my hand. I can't remember her name. I've searched newspaper articles to figure it out—if I knew who she was, after all, I could follow her to him—but no. Was that you? You smell like you came back from the dead."

MJ laughed. "No, but nice try. You know where this is going, right?"

"If he kills me, then he becomes me, yes." Norman stuck his hands in his pockets, stopping on the corner and looking around at the people on the street. "Only he'd do a better job, is that it?"

"You haven't asked who wiped your memory."

"No, I haven't." Norman turned that smile on her again.

That.

Smile.

"Because you were dead, too," she said. "You were dead, died on that spear fighting Peter. And it wasn't enough, it wasn't bad enough, so the clock was unwound. _You came back_."

He laughed, the darkest laugh she'd ever heard. "Oh, yes indeed. You thought you were the only manipulation? I've seen men and gods return from death before. I can smell the brimstone on you. Anybody who pays attention knows it happens. Somebody up there wanted me to come back. Harry. You. It's a grand game of chess. And I know that I'm not going to win, I know that somebody up there is using me. Have you realized that, yet? Do you understand what that means?"

She considered it. "Because I can kill my enemies, but I can't get rid of them. Not unless that's somebody else's endgame. That's why you take insane risks. You know you won't stay dead."

His laugh was insane now. "You're a fast study, little girl." He put a hand on her shoulder, a warm, fatherly hand. "Think my group of villains has been quiet and nice while we were gone?"

"Think my heroes have?"

"Hmm, not at all."

"Yeah." She looked up at him, into those dark, evil eyes. "So, you want to kill Peter more than you want to beat the devil?"

"Who could beat the devil at his own game?"

She grinned. "The question is, why do demons assure you that you can't beat the devil? Why does he try so hard to look above it all, but then meddle so freely? Why did he bring you and I back? And everybody else? Why he'd talk to me, show me what he was doing? Why let me bring Spider-girl back from the dead?"

Norman's nostrils flared. "My only goal in life is the Spider. You must know that."

She leaned forward. "I know who he is."

He shivered. "Yes."

"I know more than that—I know everything. I know exactly what you need to do next, if you're not a fool. Are you a fool, Norman? Are you really as crazy as everybody thinks you are?"

His smile was pure evil. "I don't know. Am I?"

"I think you might be smarter than anybody else realizes. You play along with the devil's plans, but in the meantime you've saved the world a bunch of times."

"Accumulating power."

"Which you always did through criminal pursuits before. Don't pretend you haven't changed—you have. If you'd stayed here, in New York, you would have just been… you would have chased the Spider till it killed you. And you didn't. You're adapting, trying to survive. You're trying to be more than you are. You're trying to be the one who wins, in the end."

"Well, 'wins.'" He threw up the airquotes. "We all know nobody gets the big win."

But his grin was wolfish. He was aiming for the big win.

She reviewed his team again, mentally. "There's a god on your team."

"So there is."

"And he's not even your big guns."

"Hmm, no."

She considered it. "Big wins, right?"

"Big wins."

"Gathering the power you know he wants you to have. Doing what you know he wants you to do. But…"

Norman held a finger to his lips carefully. "But everything in this world is his toy. I am his toy. You are his toy. We are meant to destroy the Spider. My obsession was so much worse when I came back. I was meticulous, smart, before that. I came back, and then I had to have him. What has changed in you since you came back?"

She licked her lips.

That.

Smile.

"Have you ever played chess?" she asked him softly.

"Every day. Every second."

He was so much more dangerous than she had assumed. She thought was a Queen, the piece that was being moved to capture the other pieces, to overwhelm them. But he wasn't.

Norman Osborn had left the board and come back changed. Norman had gone from pawn to queen. Transformed by hell. And on his return, he had come back with a dangerous knowledge. He knew just as well as she did that there was more to this game than what they were playing.

That was why he hadn't seriously tried to kill Peter, despite the dangerous compulsions that drove him. That was why he held the Sentry in reserve, waiting.

That.

Smile.

He'd gone to hell a failed tool. He'd gone to hell because he was just a man.

He'd come back as something else.

She tilted her head. "I tried working with your son. I tried working with other villains. I looked for heroes I could work with. In the end, I felt very much alone. Very much… not a part of any of this. Because I had to work alone. And the Spider, he doesn't get it. He hasn't been there. He doesn't stink of brimstone."

His nostrils flared. "Young lady, I'm not quite sure what you can possibly be asking me."

She smiled. "I've found myself in possession of some super-powers. It's my understanding that under the recently passed Registration Act I'd be required to sign up with the government, and perhaps work for them as part of one of the public super-hero teams. I would very much like to work for you, sir. Could you explain to me exactly how one signs up for the job?"

The smile was the very pit of hell itself come back to her. It was the devil's smile, reproduced as only one who had seen it first-hand could possibly do. It was every bad outcome she had imagined.

And in that moment, in that instant, it was victory for her.

2.

She knew that explaining it would be impossible. So she went back to Peter's apartment, and found May and Peter waiting for her there. Both of them unmasked, both of them with identical looks on their faces.

Fear. Anger.

"I'm going to be his new Spider-woman," said MJ bluntly. "A new suit, some cool toys. And in exchange he's going to back off of you two. New York is your city to protect."

"You've sold your soul," said Peter, angry and sad and hurt.

"No. No, I've done something bad. Something awful. But you know he's been protecting the world; you know he's been doing a good job of it. He needs somebody to keep an eye on him, somebody to temper him. And you know we couldn't go on as we have been going on. You knew it had to change. This was easy. This was simple. And this will protect you."

"He'll try to use you to get to me."

"I know, Peter. That's why, from here on out, we're done. I'm going to go stay in his headquarters. No contact."

May stepped forward. "What about me?" she asked plaintively.

MJ tried to harden herself. "You have to stay here, with Peter. I've… I've tried to be your mother. To make up for being missing all those years. But now I have to do something else; now I have to…"

She couldn't finish. May's face was hard, unreadable. But her eyes had just a hint of hurt.

MJ took a deep breath. "This is temporary, May. Just temporary. And we'll get through it. And later, when things have calmed down, you and I will have time to sit down and talk about what next. But for now… for now you have to go with your father. He still has a lot to teach you—lessons that I can't teach you."

Peter threw his arms up in the air. "I can't believe this."

MJ took May's hand between both of hers. "I need you to be a hero, May. I need you to be good, to be great; to do good. To be the hero we both know you can be. You have great power, and you've already shown me that you can be responsible with it. You've done better things with your power than I ever have. Now it's time for me to try to be as good as you've already been. Okay?"

May took a deep breath. She looked terribly old, suddenly. Jaded. "I can do that."

MJ looked at Peter, who was exasperated. Frustrated. Cold, again.

"What?" he said, still on edge.

"I have to do this, Peter." She hoped he could understand, but knew he would never understand. He had never looked into the devil's eyes. He'd never been to hell.

MJ steeled herself. He was preparing another objection, but she just shook her head. "I have four hours until I go join Norman Osborn's team of super-powered criminals and try to save the world with them and from them. That's enough time to have one shouting match, or to have a family dinner together. For god's sake, Peter, you know… you know."

3.

Harry was the easy one to talk to.

"So you're going to join my father," he said sullenly.

"Yep. Hey, Harry, you ever been dead?"

Harry glared at her. "Maybe."

"The devil brought you and me and your father back. Want to know why?"

"Gee, to fight evil?"

She smiled. "We've been given a great gift. A knowledge nobody else has of this world. A power nobody else has. You can waste yours if you like, simmer in your frustrations and resentments. You can sit here and try to decide if you're on Peter's side or your father's side."

"Or?"

"Or juice up. You've been given great power. With great power comes great responsibility."

"I thought that was Peter's motto."

"Yeah. It is."

He glared at her. "So you've chosen a side."

"I did, yeah. Man up, Harry. You want to see your father or Peter dead?"

"Not really, no. You really want me to pick one?"

"No. I don't." She leaned closer to him, lowering her voice. "If you do this right, Harry, you don't have to pick one. If you do this right, you can have it all. Do this right."

He glared at her. "What do you want me to do?"

She grinned. "I need you to be the Goblin, Harry."

"The Goblin's a bad guy."

"Yeah. I know. I need you to be the kind of villain who can get better. I need you to get out there and get Peter used to you being around, and helping him out. I need you to let him know that you know what and who he is. I need you to stop tip-toeing around it and tell him right out that you know your dad wants to kill him, and wants to know his secrets, and you aren't telling. But that you don't want to face off against your dad either. The secrets between you two will kill you. Man up. Face it head-on. Make Peter choose. You don't have to be the one choosing. You don't have to be that guy."

Harry looked down and away. "What if I can't?"

"Then I'm going to have to kill your dad to protect Peter."

Harry swung around to face her. "What?"

"Are you not listening? I'm joining your dad to be a buffer between him and Peter. You can help me be that buffer, or you can force me over to plan B, my original plan. The plan that makes me poisonous to Peter, so I can never be with him. The plan that makes me as bad as the villains. The plan that makes me a bad influence on May, too dark to be near her. The plan that makes me a bad guy. These are the stakes, Harry. This is why I need your help. If you and I walk in tandem, then we can keep them apart. If we can't, then I have to do this my way. My way is going to be to kill your father. Do you understand."

He swallowed, hard. "MJ… this is pretty dark, for you."

She laughed. "Harry, you have no idea. No idea. Your father… your father knows. He knows! And that's worth a lot more than you can possibly understand. That could make him my best bet, or my worst enemy. I'm still… I'll do what I have to do. I'm ready to kill him. Stab him in the back in cold blood." She leaned forward over the table, getting into Harry's personal space. "I came back from hell, Harry. I came back from hell to save Peter. And May. And you think I'll flinch at killing a murderer? I will kill him so fast it will shock you. I will do what I have to do. Are you ready to do what you have to do to save him?"

Harry stared at her. "You really aren't the MJ I knew."

She grinned. "No, no I am not."

4.

The new Avengers headquarters was more of a fortress than anything else, a tower dedicated to keeping the team safe when they weren't out saving the world. And it was surrounded and filled with SHEILD agents.

MJ got the distinct feeling these SHEILD agents were just as much here to keep the 'heroes' contained as they were to protect them.

She walked in the front door, careful to keep her arms down and non-threatening. "Hey, Mary-Jane Watson to see Norman Osborne. I have an appointment," she said quietly to the receptionist, who was behind bulletproof glass.

The receptionist frowned. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"He, uh, doesn't get many walk-ins."

MJ rolled her eyes. "Just pass it on, will you?"

Norman Osborn swept into the hallway, wearing the Iron Patriot armor. "Ah, Ms. Watson. Good of you to join us." Ms. Marvel was behind him, striding along as if her costume wasn't hideously uncomfortable. MJ had seen the backside of the costume, and was fairly sure that it had been designed by a man, and that walking in it was in many ways comparable to hell. MJ made a mental note that Ms. Marvel was impervious to pain.

MJ grinned. "Oh, I wouldn't have stood you up. Not and miss all the fun I'm sure we're going to be having."


	17. Chapter 17

Mary Jane goes to Hell

Summary: I admit it. It's a stinking fix-fic. I just couldn't take One More Day any more. I had it in my head, and it had to come out.

Of course, being me, that means it comes out… like this.

So, if you aren't familiar with One More Day: Spider-man made a deal with Mephisto, the devil, which undid his marriage with MJ in order to save Aunt May's life. That's all you need to know for this…

Note: This whole arc goes way AU somewhere in the middle of Dark Reign;

1.

The costume was terrible.

She'd worn tiny outfits while working the soaps. Everybody did that. Training so you'd look good in them, trying to look good while trying hard to do some serious acting around some seriously bad lines.

Now she was in a skin-tight getup that was all black and red and yellow, with a half-mask with big white eyes like Peter's mask. Now she was walking around in a full-body set of pajamas.

She was fairly sure that she looked ridiculous. Also that if she started running there was no way the top was going to provide adequate support. She was going to have to try to rebuild this costume from the inside later, try to turn it into something that would work.

"The red hair doesn't work with the costume," said Ms. Marvel.

She was surprisingly friendly, for all that she was a dangerous psychopath.

"What do you think—change the costume or the hair?" asked MJ.

Ms. Marvel shrugged. "I'd go with the hair. Most of us are trying to look like somebody we aren't. I don't see why you should act like a brand-new superhero."

"Fair enough. We'll go with that." MJ put a hand out in front of her, checking her depth perception. Things seemed just a little off behind these flat white glasses.

Ms. Marvel moved around, glaring down at the faraway streets past the window. "What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean, I know why I'm here. I'm trying to be a better me. To really figure out who I am, try to be a hero. And, you know, all that." It was half-hearted at best. She wasn't even trying to lie very hard.

"And you have to stay in line or Osborn will send Bob after you to kill you."

"Well, yes. But you're not scared of Bob, are you?"

MJ considered it. She knew only that he was capable of ending Peter's life, and easily. That he was so powerful even gods hesitated to step up against him.

She also knew now that death wasn't permanent, that the devil wanted her to be doing this work. Death would hold no mysteries for her, no surprises. Only a certain inevitable re-negotiation with the devil, which was certainly going to happen anyway, no matter what else happened.

As soon as the devil realized just what she was planning to do next.

So MJ turned to face the dangerous homicidal maniac. "I'm not scared of Norman, because he needs what I can give him more than he needs anything else in this world. That's quite a bit different from trusting him, or not being afraid of a man who could rip me limb from limb."

And it was very different from trusting Ms. Marvel, who was apparently some kind of alien, or empowered by some kind of alien, or something like that. And used to be a villain. Or was currently a villain.

This team was confusing if you thought about it any further than 'Norman Osborn's thugs.'

Ms. Marvel sneered. "You don't have anything he needs, not really. He just wants you to think that."

MJ grinned slowly, widely. She didn't try to fully emulate the devil's signature grin… she didn't need to. She had more than enough of that blackness in her heart now.

Ms. Marvel didn't freeze up. She stepped back, and some of her power signature began to bleed out of her hands. She readied herself for battle.

"Think so?" asked MJ softly. "Maybe you need to ask yourself just why he went from hunting the spider to recruiting one."

Ms. Marvel walked away briskly without bothering to reply. She ran both hot and cold in the same sentence, and apparently had quite a bit of difficulty empathizing with people. MJ was guessing that she was either a psychopath or a sociopath, but the precise diagnosis was beyond her.

At any rate, there were bigger problems here.

The SHIELD agent in charge of tech had found some web-shooters. "These are reverse-engineered from the sample of webbing we found in New York," she said. "They don't work precisely like the real thing. They dissolve at a different rate, and we have trouble with the consistency—his apparently works no matter how far the target. You'll have to adjust manually based on how far away the target is, because you'll need a thicker strand. Be careful not to set the thrust to maximum when you're shooting at something close—you could blast the webbing right through your target."

Where Peter's web-shooter was a simple one-button design, this had several dials and buttons for the palm of her hand, and shot from the top of her wrist, not the bottom. The webbing came out white, glittery, not the flat nearly-invisible grey strands he produced.

MJ peeled her glove back and carefully put on the web-shooter, wondering exactly how she was going to go about web-slinging the way he did. Part of his success there was his great speed and agility, and the goblin serum hadn't given her that.

"And extra webbing material is here, in these easy-to-load cartridges." Larger than Peter's. "We'll have resupplies available before every mission, as part of the briefing-and-outfitting."

Very professional. She suspected she'd need to find an alternate source to make sure that she wasn't too dependent on these folks. "This material feels a little less armor-like than I was anticipating."

"The Spider-woman suit is designed to maximize agility. I presume your power-set isn't quite the same as the last Spider-woman?"

"Right."

"Okay, then. We have several different designs, depending on power-set. Do you have your Richards numbers?"

"Beg pardon?"

"The Richards scale is an easy way to figure out your relative power levels."

"Right, right. Of course."

"Never been tested?"

MJ squinted at the agent, who had a little half-smile going on. "I should have, right?"

"Usually even folks who haven't kind of know what they can do."

MJ thought about that. "I know what I can do. I'm not sure how to describe it."

"Well, give it a shot. Probably quicker than taking the day to put you through your paces."

MJ considered everything the serum did to her, everything she'd done since injecting herself with it. She thought about the other things that had happened.

It seemed ridiculous to bring up her experience killing demons, or using holy weapons. That was a skill, not a power. And had her speed really stayed the same? Certainly she'd almost kept up with Peter, and his speed was far, far beyond anything human.

"I know I'm strong, now. Stronger than Spider-man, I think. I know I heal faster than normal. I think I've survived things I couldn't have otherwise. I've been blown up without a single bone breaking."

"Standard bruiser powerup, right."

Probably Norman would understand the power better, but she didn't want to admit to too many people that their power came from the same source.

There was a crashing noise somewhere behind them, deeper in the tower. The agent turned her comlink on calmly, drawing her weapon. "That sounds like a transporter of some sort. Terrorist attack on the director, probably."

Terrorists who were indistinguishable from regular heroes, probably. MJ rolled her eyes behind the safety of those flat lenses. "You want to go see what that's all about?"

The agent frowned, putting a hand on her sidearm. "You aren't cleared for duty yet."

"Right. So why don't we head for the roof, then?"

"The roof?"

"I want to test these webshooters. Or a window. A window would probably work."

The agent stepped back, keeping a hand on her weapon. "I really think now is not a good time—"

MJ was nice. She dialed the force on the webshooter down to just half-power, and put the other dial, the size of the web to be shot, up to maximum. The blast was still hard enough to pick the agent up and slam her against the wall.

The webbing spread out like silly putty, stretching out and pinning her there. Some of it flowed up into her face, but the agent had the presence of mind to turn her face and open her mouth quickly, keeping her airway clear.

MJ turned and sprinted back towards the source of the sound. She met the Dark Wolverine on the way, his claws already out.

"What do we know?" she asked him.

He grinned at her. "Some more fools looking for Osborn."

She nodded, following him. He seemed familiar with the layout.

2.

The fighting was over quick. MJ managed to make a good showing, taking down twice as many AIM agents as Wolverine managed.

And quite a bit less lethally.

The regular agents were moving in slowly, making arrests and trying to tally up the damage and lives lost. MJ's knuckles were sore, and she had already used half the fluid she'd been given—using it as a long-range weapon exhausted it pretty quickly. She wished she could figure out what kind of propellant it used.

Wolverine had taken his mask off. He wasn't currently doing that thing where he made her want him, which was good. She leaned against the wall beside him. "So, how's the world-saving business."

He snorted. "You ever clear up the situation with the guy pretending to be Sabretooth?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

She wondered if she should thank him for the help he'd given her in figuring out that it wasn't Sabretooth at all. She decided against it. "You're pretty reasonable for one of Osborn's boys."

He shrugged. "I'm here to drag my father's name through the dirt. Anything else is just icing on the cake. You know, you smell like Osborn, in some way I don't really understand."

She chuckled. "Ain't died yet, huh?"

He was silent for a while, thinking about that.

A few agents had moved to circle them in, guns in hand.

"Is that for you?" asked Wolverine.

"I think so. I may have webbed up my handler and run off to help you just now."

He laughed. "Run off to help me! That's choice. Why?"

"I wasn't sure Ms. Marvel was going to help… she looked a little distracted when I saw her last. And I know Osborn took Ares and Bob and the Spider-man with him to Ohio."

"But I'm here, and these expendables are here, and is there really any point sticking your neck out for these?"

She shrugged. "I'm here to get stuff done. Not to stand around and wonder why exactly alarms are going off and hold my handler's hand."

One of the agents stepped forward. "Ma'am, would you come with us please?"

She nodded. "Of course, kid. Of course."

3.

Norman was upstairs, returned from his trip to find out why aliens had tried to invade Earth, again.

He was watching video of her fighting. She moved beside him silently, watching the instant replay.

She'd been right. Totally inadequate support.

"If your powers are very much like mine, then you'll need regular doses of serum to maintain your power levels," he said quietly.

"I've been doing that."

"Yes. You may need medical monitoring… it's addictive, you know. As addictive as hell. And the more you take the worse the effect."

"Yes."

"Also, that costume isn't quite right. Your skin hasn't had a chance to build up any kind of toughness or armor. You need something that'll take a bullet. I'll talk to the tech people."

"Thanks."

"And you are a vixen." He put an arm over her shoulders, almost paternalistically. "Look at you fight! All heart, no brains. We'll work on that. Why did you go charging in?"

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed." He let go of her, turning away from the screen to look out over the city. "It's a terrible burden to always be the sane person in an insane world. Or vice versa. A terrible burden to be the only one to see clearly that there is a way forward… have you spoken to Bob yet?"

"No."

"Do you feel like you have a handle on the others?"

"Sure. Hawkeye is a murderer. That's all he lives for. The killing. Ms. Marvel is unstable, maybe more dangerous because of her powerset. Your Spider-man is kept under sedation at all times, locked up. Your Wolverine is a wild card—he has no qualms about killing, but he doesn't seem to enjoy it. He does seem to enjoy manipulating people and playing headgames."

"Hmm, yes."

"So, what about Bob?"

"Bob's insane."

"…really? That seems so… so utterly like the rest of your team."

"Not in the same way. Not in the violent way Hawkeye is insane, or the mildly dissociative way Ms. Marvel is insane, or in the predatory way Wolverine is insane, or the utterly ravenous way Venom is insane. He is insane in a much more dangerous way."

"And how is that?"

"He is still under the impression that he is a good guy."

MJ laughed. "Really?"

"And that he has an arch-enemy who will come back and fight him, some super-powered being utterly opposed to him, opposite to him. This enemy, of course, is an utter fiction, and is part and parcel of him. His insanity is to think that he is an utterly normal person with extraordinary powers, when he is in fact a monster who has invaded the body of a normal person. And as a person he is a narcissist and a petty man who is entirely unsuited to be a superhero. I have played off of that, playing to his ego and making him think he is doing good work. That is one of the reasons I cannot use him for any black ops like going after your Spider. Because he would see that it is evil, and that would utterly destroy him."

"Right. The real reason you only used him in a very limited way."

"Yes."

"What happens when his alter ego takes over?"

Norman shrugged. "I keep him close to hand. If he turns, then it's going to be a matter of bringing as much force to bear as I can. He represents a greater threat than anything else, really. Unless I can use his alter ego in some way, in which case it represents opportunity. But either way, it's difficult to imagine how I could come out ahead. So, Mary-Jane Watson. How exactly did you bring a Spider-girl into existence?"

MJ grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know. You want me to start responding to situations with your team?"

"You wish. No, I do not. They're a bunch of unstable freaks. I want you to start leading the Beta team."

"Beta team?"

"Alpha team is mine right now. I've got a secondary team that I've been working on, trying to put together. A slightly less insane team."

"Slightly less."

"Nobody who's not insane would follow the Green Goblin into battle for the forces of light and goodness. That you volunteered for the job does suggest a psych eval is in order."

"Of course. Who's on the team?"

"Semi-reformed villains masquerading as heroes is the order of the day, naturally."

"Right. Names?"

"Sorry, old habit. So, some of the old second-tier Avengers that we co-opted are either dead or in hiding, so we felt safe using their identities. I'll send bios and code-names to you. We'll start rolling you out to the public as soon as the next crisis comes up. And, more importantly, that'll give you some down-time to sift through the data I've accumulated on Harry."

"Data you've accumulated on Harry?"

"Yes. My memories of him seem a little… well. How shall we say. Off?"

"Ah."

"Do you know when the point of divergence was?"

"I don't. It was after you died… when he was the goblin. I know that much."

"Yes."

"Can I have him on my team?"

"He's not juicing up, and he refused the offer I made him which would have empowered him considerably."

Interesting. MJ wasn't the only one trying to keep Harry from being quite so vulnerable to death. "Right, then."

"And, Mary-Jane… do keep this under your hat, yes?"

"Of course."

"And your own secret plans?"

She smiled grimly. "I'll let you know."

"And the spiders?"

"The less they know, the better."

"Right."

They stood there in silence a minute, both of them smiling coldly. He turned to face her, and frowned when he saw how very close to his expression hers had come. "Was Spider-girl ever dead?"

"Not dead. In hell, but not dead." It was too complicated to really explain.

His eyebrows shot up. "Well, then."

MJ nodded. "So, what do we know about the other guy?"

"Smart, powerful, and plans within plans, wheels within wheels." Norman turned to stare out the window once more. "And he has spent so very much effort on this plan. So very much. He has sacrificed other plans for this. Why is this one plan so important? Why this one man? There are others more powerful. Why not Bob?"

"Because raw power isn't everything. Because Bob lacks imagination. Bob lacks creativity. And above all else, passion."

"Passion." He turned back, grinning. "There, the spider and I have something in common. All right, your first mission is going to be to go run down these children." He leaned over his desk, grabbing a folder. "They're unregistered metahumans, and as such, are our province."

"Children?"

"Extremely powerful children."

"Ah. Will my team be enough…?"

"Your team will certainly not be enough. You, however, are not really going after these children because of the threat they represent to law and order. You are going after these children because one of them wields a powerful staff that is rumored to be able to… well. Rumors."

"Rumors."

"Even the famed sorcerer supreme did not have the power to do… certain things. And, of course, he refused to work with me, choosing to side against me. An… interesting choice, all things considered."

MJ nodded. "Of course he chose that. What choice was he left?"

"In the end, none of us gets a choice. Not a real one. So, would you like to meet your new team?"


End file.
